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THE SHORT-STORY 
ITS PRINCIPLES AND STRUCTURE 



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THE SHORT-STORY 



Its Principles and Structure 



BY 



EVELYN MAY ALBRIGHT, M.A. 

INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH 
OHIO WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1907 

All rights reserved 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

APR n 1907 

! a Copyright Entry 
CLASS A XXcf MS 

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Copyright, 1907, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1907. 



Norfajooli $regg 

J. 8. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



Co 

JAMES WHITFORD BASHFORD 



PREFACE 

The aim of this book is not to trace the origin 
or the development of the short- story, but to set 
forth some standards of appreciation of what is 
good in story-writing, illustrating by the practice 
of the masters as contrasted with amateurish fail- 
ures : this with the view of rousing the student to 
a more lively interest in his reading, and of awak- 
ening such a wholesome spirit of self-criticism as 
shall enable him to improve his own workmanship, 
should he feel called to write. 

It is expected that one who undertakes to study 
or to write short-stories will become acquainted at 
first hand with the masterpieces of this art. With 
this in view, a reading-list has been appended, 
roughly classified in parallel arrangement with the 
topics studied in the text. The list includes, be- 
sides a number of stories generally recognized as 
great, a fairly representative selection from recent 
magazines. It is the author's belief that not only 
the masterpiece but the story which is moderately 
good can be made a profitable study in construc- 
tion for the beginner. But it has been the aim to 



viii PREFACE 

lay due stress, within the text, on those elements 
of greatness which distinguish the masterpiece from 
the average short-story. 

The books which I have found most useful are 
referred to in the footnotes, and listed in the biblio- 
graphical note at the close. Special acknowledg- 
ment is due Professor William E. Smyser for 
helpful criticism. But my heaviest debt is to 
Mr. James Weber Linn and Mr. Nott Flint for 
their suggestive courses in the short-story given 

at the University of Chicago. 

E. M. A. 
Delaware, Ohio, Sept. i, 1906. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Introductory i 

II. Gathering Material .... 14 

III. The Motive as the Source of Plot . 28 

IV. Plot 48 

V. Mechanism 58 

VI. Unity of Impression 84 

VII. The Title 91 

VIII. Characterization 102 

IX. Dialogue 128 

X. The Setting 149 

XI. The Realistic Movement . . . .169 
XII. The Element of Fantasy . . .180 

XIII. The Emotional Element . . . .188 

XIV. The Spirit of the Author . . . 224 

Bibliographical Note 233 

Appendix (List of Reading) 234 

Suggestions for Assignments of Stories and 

Constructive Exercises 246 

Index 257 



THE SHORT-STORY 

CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTORY 

From the dawn of intellect some form of story- 
telling has held the foremost place in human interest. 
A mere glance over the history of literatures reveals 
their narrative foundations. The place of the " Iliad " 
and the " Odyssey," of the songs of the troubadours 
in France and the minnesingers in Germany, and 
of the chronicles and ballads of old England, is too 
well recognized to need special comment. What is 
perhaps more significant is the fact that, amid the 
multiplication of literary themes and literary forms, 
story-telling has continued to hold its own even to our 
day, and promises to take a yet higher place in the 
literature of the coming age. Narration in its varied 
form and matter claims the interest of every think- 
ing man. The story holds this vast audience because 
it is so wholly human and furnishes a concrete, 
practical, personal, and infinitely sympathetic me- 
dium of expression. 

b i 



2 THE SHORT-STORY 

Out of this commonest and most popular form 
of expression special forms have gradually shaped 
themselves: history, biography, epic poetry, drama, 
and prose fiction. And prose fiction, possibly the 
largest, loosest form of narrative, has separated at 
length into two great branches representative of 
two main moods and tendencies; namely, the 
realistic novel and the romance. 

Until very recently the term novel has been taken 
loosely as covering almost all varieties of fiction, 
including the long, loose picaresque novel or tale of 
adventure characteristic of one branch of early 
eighteenth- century fiction, the bold and powerful 
pictures of contemporary life sketched by Richard- 
son and Fielding and Smollett and culminating in 
the splendid realism of William Thackeray ; and the 
perennial romance, with its glamour of far away, 
tracing its small beginnings back even farther than 
Sidney's "Arcadia," suffering suppression through 
the realistic genius of the eighteenth century, spring- 
ing out again in Horace Walpole and Anne Rad- 
cliffe, and finding its true blossoming time in the 
age of Walter Scott. The history of these larger 
pieces of fiction has been that of successive waves 
of realism and romance. But to-day we are at a 
standstill, seeing for the first time an approach to 
equality in the products of these opposing schools. 



INTRODUCTORY 3 

There are novels and novels, — for the novel-mill is 
working overtime, — but there is no one preeminently 
great novel of the day. 

It is very probable that the lack of one predomi- 
nant type of novel may have had something to do with 
the increased interest in a hitherto neglected form of 
fiction. For the short-story has only recently been 
seen to have definite characteristics and become 
recognized as a distinctive work of art. It has been 
hinted that the short- story, when it shall have en- 
listed the best efforts of our greatest writers, may 
become more popular than the novel — that it may 
even displace the novel altogether. But this fear 
is not well grounded, inasmuch as the short- story 
aspires more and more definitely to the fulfilling of 
a distinct mission of its own, and is therefore becom- 
ing more and more sharply differentiated from 
the novel. The good novel never can suffer dis- 
placement by the good short-story, because their 
fields are different. So that it is hardly worth while 
to discuss the relative merits of novel and short- 
story as food for the emotions. One might as 
profitably compare the abstract values of lean meats 
and vegetables. Both have their special uses. And 
there is little danger that the growing interest in the 
short-story will take away the interest of the thought- 
ful reader in the novel. Giving, as it does, but the 



4 THE SHORT-STORY 

condensed essence of life, the short-story as an ex- 
clusive diet would be likely to produce a sort of 
"emotional dyspepsia" in the interested reader. 

The short- story is not, as many think it, a new 
kind of composition. It is old — quite as old as the 
form of fiction which we call the novel. Indeed, 
I am inclined to think, with Canby, 1 that it is very 
much older than the novel. The Book of Ruth, 
written about 450 B.C., is essentially a short-story. 
Some twenty-three hundred years have affected the 
technique of story-writing, bringing about in some 
directions such a remarkable development as to make 
plausible the assertion that the short-story is a 
nineteenth-century product. But twenty- three hun- 
dred years have not sufficed to rob this simple nar- 
rative of story interest for readers of to-day. The 
facts of the case are, that the short-story appeared 
in occasional excellence even before the time of the 
first novel worthy of the name; but the short-story 
waited almost a century longer than the novel for 
its period of development as a special form of art. 
The historical point worth noting is, that the short- 
story is not in its origin an outgrowth or an offshoot 
from the novel, although it is frequently spoken of 
as if it were a mere by-product of the novelist's art. 

1 The student should read the excellent introduction to Jessup and 
Canby's "The Book of the Short-Story," printed separately in the 
Yale Studies in English. 



INTRODUCTORY 5 

The short-story has, however, so much in com- ■ 
mon with the novel that it is worth while to try to 
mark off a boundary line. The novel aims to rep- 
resent „ a large period or the whole of some particu- 
lar life or lives ; the short-story is a fragment. The 
novelist, endeavoring to render life in all its fulness, 
portrays exhaustively details which an artistic story- 
teller instinctively avoids. Where the realistic novel / 
is complete, the short-story is suggestive. In the 
handling of material, then, the most striking differ- 
ence between the novel and the short-story is that 
the problem of selection, or of suggestive omission 
and compression, is for the short-story writer of su- 
preme importance. For the short-story can never, 
like the novel, give us the whole of life. It can only 
aim to present, in a vigorous, compressed, suggestive 
way, a simplification and idealization of a particular 
part or phase of life. In following out this more 
limited and specific aim, the short-story has neces- 
sarily a simpler and more clever plot: action more 
continuous, more coherent, more significant for char- 
acterization ; time and place and point of view gen- 
erally the same throughout; characters fewer and 
more striking, and presented under more unusual 
circumstances. In a word, the short-story has a 
unity that can be distinctly felt. The novel may or 
may not have one fundamental idea as its basis: 



6 THE SHORT-STORY 

/ a fundamental idea of some sort is for the short - 
story, in the modern sense of the term, an absolute 
prerequisite. For the short-story of to-day aims 
not merely to recount a series of interesting, events 
in chronological or logical order, but to create a 
vivid picture of a bit of life in such a way as to render 
a preconceived idea or impression. It has for its 
material not merely people and events, but people 
in their relations to one another and to their en- 
vironment. In a word, the short-story material is 
a single situation. 1 The modern short-story differs 

, in this respect from the novel, and also from the 
simple narrative or tale from which it sprang. The 
novel is concerned with life histories ; and the simple 
narrative or tale, with an interesting sequence of 
events. The short-story, on the other hand, only 
suggests life histories by retrospect or hint of future 
or by presenting determining crises in the lives of 
characters ; and it uses its series of events in ac- 
cordance with a dominating motive, to render the 
impression of a situation. 

*r Brander Matthews, in his "Philosophy of the 
Short-Story," lays great stress on this unity of 
impression — what Poe calls the "effect of totality" 
— as the mark of distinction between the short- 

1 For fuller development of this idea, see Canby's "The Mod- 
ern Short-Story," Dial, Sept. i, 1904. 



INTRODUCTORY 7 

story and the novel. And Canby, carrying the dis- 
tinction still further, says that it is the deliberate and 
conscious use 0) impressionistic methods, together 
with* the increasing emphasis on situation, that 
distinguishes the short-story of to-day from the tale 
or simple narrative and makes it seem a new work 
of art. 

Limitation of range of material to a single situa- 
tion in the lives of the main characters furnishes 
a fundamental unity of design. The typical short- 
story embodies a theme so simple as to demand no 
subdivisions. Very rarely will there be major and 
minor characters in groups, as in the novel; and 
almost never will there be anything like an underplot 
or secondary line of interest. It is only by such 
strict limitation of aim and subject-matter that the 
short-story can attain that complete and rounded 
unity which makes it, in the hands of a master artist, 
capable of a perfection of form that is almost 
lyric. 

But the tremendous variety of motives possible 
to the short-story, and the wide range of material 
from which themes may be drawn, render it impos- 
sible to crystallize the story in any definite shape. 
Capable of very fine effects in miniature, the short- 
story is still the "most flexible literary form," and 
therefore the least amenable to rules. Partly 



8 THE SHORT-STORY 

because of this lack of definite form, and partly be- 
cause it is miniature work, the short-story has been 
altogether neglected by many masters of the larger 
form of fiction. But the fact that very few writers 
besides Stevenson and Kipling have had anything 
like equal success in the novel and the short-story, 
leads one to think that the two are distinct forms 
of art, demanding, if not different kinds of genius, 
at least very different habitual focussing of the 
imagination. It is true that many great novelists 
have trained their wings through these shorter flights. 
But it is equally true that the short-story, requiring, 
as it does, no sustained flight of the imagination, 
but rather concentration on a single issue, has 
somehow come to be regarded as work most suitable 
for novices. The variety of motives and perhaps 
the very lack of anything like uniformity in style 
and structure have made the short-story a perenni- 
ally tempting field for amateurs. These are some 
of the reasons why short-story literature, though 
almost as old as time, contains so many specimens 
that are good, but so few that stand out as preemi- 
nently great. And the fact that the short-story has 
only recently emerged from the shadow of its sister 
arts and come into the field of criticism as a dis- 
tinct artistic form is sufficient to account for the 
widespread lack of even such fundamental standards 



INTRODUCTORY 9 

of appreciation as are necessary to enable one to 
distinguish between the story which is readable, 
enjoyable, — even profitable, perhaps, — and that 
which deserves perpetuation as a masterpiece of 
fiction. 

THE SHORT-STORY AND THE DRAMA 

In scope and style, if not in subject-matter, the 
short-story of to-day is as nearly akin to the drama 
as to the novel. Indeed, it would seem that the 
growing emphasis on situation rather than a mere 
sequence of interesting events, the marked prefer- 
ence for presenting crises in the lives of characters, 
and the " deliberate and conscious use of impression- 
istic methods" must have been derived in great 
measure from a study of the technique of the drama.- 
The story- writer, like the dramatist, is compelled by 
lack of space to present his situation effectively in 
a few strong strokes, and to render his main charac- 
ters prominent in their true relations to each other 
and to their whole environment without the aid of 
many groups of lesser characters and without the 
background of a long series of minor events which 
prepare for and emphasize the climax. The ar- 
tificial isolation of a limited number of people and 
events, the artistic heightening of dialogue, the con- 
centration on a single issue, the vivid picturing of 



io THE SHORT-STORY 

a scene that is significant, are essentially dramatic. 
In a word, the drama is largely responsible for the 
brilliant technique which is one of the distinguish- 
ing features of modern story- writing. Strictly 
dramatic form is a drawback to the story; but the 
dramatic way of looking at a situation and many 
dramatic devices for heightening its effectiveness are 
not only useful but almost essential to the impression 
story of to-day. So that, in motive, in methods, and 
in its stimulating effect upon the imagination of the 
reader, the vivid impressionistic story is more 
nearly akin to the drama than to the novel. The 
main difference between the story motive and that 
of drama is that the story may treat a more com- 
monplace theme and a less striking situation, with 
a climax less significant and intense. In concen- 
tration, the story ranks about midway between the 
novel and the drama. 

RELATION TO SHORTER FORMS OF FICTION 

It has been sufficiently emphasized that the short- 
story is not a cut-down novel and not a variety of 
prose drama. Neither is it an expanded anecdote, 
nor a mere narrative tale, nor a development of the 
informal essays of Addison and Steele. Its motive 
is more complex than that of the anecdote, more 
specific than that of the narrative tale, and less di- 



INTRODUCTORY n 

dactic than that of the character-sketches of the 
Tatler and Spectator papers. 

The anecdote is clearly distinguished from the 
short-story by Ho wells, when he says: 1 "The 
anecdote is palpably simple and single. It offers 
an illustration of character, or records a moment of 
action; the novella (short-story) embodies a drama 
and develops a type." 

The term tale, in its old-fashioned meaning, was 
almost as broad as narration itself, including loosely 
not only most forms of the short-story then in vogue, 
but also much of the larger fiction which we now class 
under the terms novel, novelette, and romance. The 
style of the old tale was rambling, discursive; the 
subject-matter might be almost anything. At the 
call of a busy age, this loose, scattering sort of nar- 
rative gave way to short, sharp, strong, and clever 
bits of narrative distinguished by their unity, com- 
pression, and suggestive power. The term tale gave 
way to the term short-story as all-inclusive of this 
new branch of literature ; but the name itself, though 
greatly changed and restricted, did not die away. It 
is now applied to a particular form of the short- story. 

The tale of to-day is the story of a single incident 
or episode. The more stirring the incident, and the 

1 " Some Anomalies of the Short-Story," North American, 
September, 1901. 



12 THE SHORT-STORY 

more pungent the style, the better the tale; for the 
interest of the tale is centred wholly in the action. 
Essential to the tale is absolute simplicity of plot 
and singleness of purpose. Suspense, surprise and 
climax, and careful handling of the action as to 
speed, intensity, and outcome, are all desirable if 
the subject-matter permits. But the distinguishing 
feature of the tale of to-day is its strict unity and 
its limitation to a single incident. 

The short-story in its modern form began in the 
short, simple narrative which showed more or less 
conscious selection of significant details, with limita- 
tion of time, place, and number of characters, result- 
ing in the unity that is a necessary accompaniment 
of simplicity of style and omission and compression. 
During the nineteenth century there came a marked 
and widespread development of the art of story- 
writing, resulting in what seemed a distinct nine- 
teenth-century type. America, France, and Ger- 
many were the leaders in this movement. France 
best mastered the impressionistic methods; but the 
work of Irving and Hawthorne and Poe is of such 
importance that it gives America even to-day a claim 
to preeminence in this distinctively modern form of 
art. The short-story has been essayed in all great 
literatures; but it has its homes in America and 
France. 



INTRODUCTORY 13 

Canby says, in his essay on "The Modern Short- 
Story," in the Dial (Sept. 15, 1904) : "The change in 
thought and feeling which has produced a more 
subtle, more analytic mind, that shifting of interests 
which has given the nineteenth century a distinctly 
individual tone, is the result of some mental evolu- 
tion which has not been thoroughly analyzed. But 
this new method of story-telling is as dependent 
upon it, and upon what lies behind it, as nature 
poetry, or the psychological novel, or any other 
reflection of man's mind which is more characteristic 
of an age than of those which have preceded it." 



CHAPTER II 

GATHERING ^ATEJilAL 

One can give no more than hints as to possible 
sources of material for stories. To tabulate these 
sources would be as absurd as to instruct a painter 
how to see a picture in the faces and attitudes of the 
people he meets on the streets, where to see the pos- 
sibility of a striking model, how to gather a landscape 
from the massing of clouds and trees and the sweep- 
ing slope of a valley-side. For the story- writer's 
subjects are infinitely diverse. 

The natural story-teller finds his motives every- 
where. He differs from other people only in his 
attitude toward his daily experience. He is ever 
alert to the dramatic situations that are constantly 
appearing to those who have the appreciative eye, 
and ever busy reflecting on the essential significance 
of these dramatic situations. It is his delight to 
observe and note the fresh, the striking, the unusual 
or interesting phases of the human life about him, 
to turn them over in his mind till they have taken 
definite new form, and send them forth again — his 

14 



GATHERING MATERIAL 15 

own creation. The trained story-writer leaves off 
reading even his daily newspaper with his mind 
teeming with ideas, some of which may eventually 
suggest a story to him. A poem or an incident from 
a novel may be rich in imaginative association, sug- 
gesting a train of thought related but nevertheless 
distinct. Better still, every significant though trivial 
experience of its own has its story value for him. He 
seems to be lying in wait for happenings. To test 
a Berlin system, Mark Twain deliberately threw 
away his street-car ticket fifteen times, and each 
time was required to pay his fare. He made five 
hundred dollars from the story which he based upon 
this simple incident. 

We say that a good story- writer must have imagi- 
nation ; but what do we mean by imagination ? Is it 
some rare, God-given faculty or talent, completed at 
the start, or is it a power of the mind common to us 
all, but in some stronger and finer and more per- 
fectly trained? Rather the latter. For, granted 
that there are a few people in the world who are 
essentially dull, practical, commonplace, — or, as we 
generally say, unimaginative, — the great majority 
of people have imaginations which are sleeping or 
starving or actively at work in some unprofitable, 
perhaps insane, direction. The question is, how to 
feed and regulate the imagination so that it shall be 



16 THE SHORT-STORY 

not only sane and healthy, but productive of some- 
thing of aesthetic or utilitarian value. 

Modern psychology has done much to simplify 
our ideas of this mysterious power that we call the 
imagination; and it has rendered education an in- 
valuable service in emphasizing the now familiar 
fact that imagination, being a process, must have 
materials to work on. It is not worth while to -set 
about the work of training the imagination until you 
have begun to feed it. This means, very simply, 
appreciating the value of the senses as avenues for 
getting fresh material. "How few materials," says 
Emerson, "are yet used by our arts ! The mass of 
creatures and qualities are still hid and expectant." 

The need of careful and accurate observation can- 
not be too often pointed out. Most of us use our 
eyes a little now and then, but let the other senses 
sleep. Burroughs, in one of his outdoor essays, 
likens the perceptive faculties to a trap, delicately 
and lightly set. But those of most of us, he says, 
"are so rusty that only a bear would suffice to spring 
the trap." It is true that most of us, instead of 
being alert with all our senses, are habitually pre- 
occupied so that we miss all but the great and 
startling incidents of the life about us. A study of 
the beautiful descriptions by the great poets and prose 
writers will do much to convince the doubter that 



GATHERING MATERIAL 17 

fine literary effects rest back very often upon fine 
observation as a basis. Whether it be a realistic 
sketch of everyday life or purest fantasy or romance, 
no story will appeal to human beings unless it is 
grounded on a keen observation of the essential 
phases of actual human nature in its actual envi- 
ronment. For psychology has told us, once for all, 
that without fact there can be no play of the imagi- 
nation. Facts about outer life cannot be evolved 
wholly from within. In the very beginning of his 
work, then, the story- writer must lay his senses open 
to the world about him. He must observe the speech 
and actions of his fellow-men, study their expres- 
sions, reflect upon their characters, sympathetically 
interpret motives, leaping over the bridge of per- 
sonality and making common cause with other 
people's feelings. And eventually he must be able 
to reproduce on the stage of his own mind some- 
thing of that wonderful interaction by which we 
human beings are woven and interwoven into the 
complex web of humanity. 

Important as is the gathering of facts through 
observation, this in itself is no adequate preparation 
for writing stories. Mere facts about people and 
their deeds will make narration, but not short-story. 
Fiction of the higher sort aims at something greater 
than mere transcription : it aims at original creation. 



1 8 THE SHORT-STORY 

To this end, it seeks for its material not mere fact 
with its cold superficial reality, but the kind of fact 
that embodies the whole of things — a complete 
human being, mind and soul and body, manner and 
motive, circumstance and character — such a live, 
warm fact as the throbbing, pulsing, human life. 
To this end it aims, too, at comprehending the 
spirit of the actual and the real rather than its mere 
external manifestations. The value of facts for 
fiction lies mainly in what they represent, in the 
suggestion or meaning they convey. 

It follows from this that there are plenty of actu- 
alities which never could acquire a story value. As 
actualities, they may even have the interest of the 
unusual, the unique, and yet be unavailable for 
literary purposes. The mere fact that it " happened 
to have happened so" is not the slightest guarantee 
of plot success. Sufficient proof of this is furnished 
in the thrilling narratives of adventure, of whose 
truth we are so positively assured. The more thrill- 
ing the incident, the greater the strain on the credulity 
of the reader; and, consequently, the finer the skill 
of the writer if he achieves verisimilitude. No mere 
actuality can make an improbable incident seem 
true in fiction. A student wrote a story of a sensa- 
tional rescue of a somnambulist by a policeman who 
rushed up to the fourth story of an apartment house, 



GATHERING MATERIAL 19 

fitted a skeleton key into a door, jumped from a 
window to a roof, and captured the somnambulist 
before she could succeed in walking off into the 
street below. The main incident is narrated thus : — 
u O 'Sullivan had crept steadily upon her. He 
noticed a heavy guy wire extending across the street 
by her side. As she unconsciously stepped forward 
to her death, he leaped and grasped her with one 
arm, seizing the guy wire with the other. The 
shock awoke the young lady. She shrieked in fright 
and collapsed. By a sharp command, O 'Sullivan 
brought her to her senses. And, as the wire swayed 
and creaked under the unusual strain, the young 
lady climbed on to the roof. In a moment more 
O 'Sullivan followed." This story is based on a 
news paragraph purporting to be true. Neverthe- 
less, the credulity of the reader suffers a heavier 
strain even than the guy wire. The amateur, con- 
fident in the power of mere facts, is prone to rely 
on them to work out their own plausibility. It might 
almost be said, without attempt at paradox, that 
most of the outlandish and impossible plots fur- 
nished by young students turn out to be narratives 
of fact. Truth is sometimes so very much stranger 
than fiction that it is dangerous to handle it. Take, 
for instance, another story of adventure. A hos- 
pitable old couple received a stranger who asked 



20 THE SHORT-STORY 

for a night's lodging. Toward midnight he de- 
scended noiselessly to their bedroom, armed with a 
large knife and a hatchet. "Raising the hatchet, 
he struck the old lady full in the face. This awak- 
ened her husband, who seized the blade of the knife 
just as it was about to enter his heart. A short 
struggle ensued. The old lady quickly recovered 
from the effects of the blow, slipped from her bed, 
and escaped to the house of a neighbor." The 
author goes on to remark, naively, "The escape 
of the old lady so alarmed the burglar that he turned 
and fled." This proved to be a narrative of fact, but 
it was not short-story : it sounded more like common 
lying. Whether he has or has not facts to fall back 
upon, the story-writer must proceed as if it were 
his business to "make the thing that is not as the 
thing that is." The materials may be striking, but 
they must not seem improbable. 

Another potent reason why the story- writer should \ 
not depend solely on the uniqueness of his facts for \ 
*5^- interest is, that such facts leave little or no room for 
originality of treatment or imaginative elaboration. 
Originality in the handling of facts is mainly a mat- 
ter of interpreting from an individual point of view. 
It requires sometimes the reading of a meaning into 
a situation and interpreting it to other people. The 
story- writer's aim is, to render the subjective signifi- 



GATHERING MATERIAL 21 

cance of a striking scene, event, or character and, 
through interpretation, to give it something like a 
permanent and universal literary value. 

One of the most important parts of the author's 
work is generally done unconsciously. Narration is 
very dependent on the process of reminiscence. If 
one remembers a bit of story material, it is generally 
because it made one definite impression on him. It 
was surrounded by numerous other items of experi- 
ence — perhaps so buried in the mass that its mean- 
ing was hidden to less sensitive observers ; but to the 
author it has appealed in some definite way. He 
remembers that appeal, that impression, above all 
the insignificant attending circumstances. These 
he can, perhaps, recall at will ; but they are of small 
importance, save as they furnish the actual setting. 
Memory, then, has accented the original impression 
by discarding the insignificant and secondary, leaving 
patent only the heart of the situation. Spontaneously, 
but in accordance with the necessary methods of 
literary art, the author has moved from complexity 
to simplicity of material and purpose. He has con- 
ceived the aim of conveying a single impression 
through the presentation of an interesting story 
situation. 

He must now cast about for the best form. It 
may be that he has added so much of the subjective 



22 THE SHORT-STORY 

and personal that the original form is quite out of 
the question; he must invent for his idea a larger 
shape. What that shall be, is a new problem for 
every story. 

One of the most important questions of method 
is, what amount of detail shall be preserved. The 
use of significant detail is one of the distinctive 
marks of the short-story. But of course anything 
like the full presentation is impossible. Only the 
striking and suggestive must be chosen — the hint 
which will imply the whole ; for there is no point in 
a mere copy of the dull commonplaces of our life. It 
is a part of the author's work to clear away the mean- 
ingless, that the reader may find thrown into relief 
the dramatic meaning hidden in these common 
things. For, as Stevenson declares, "A short-story 
is not a transcript of life, to be judged by its exacti- 
tude, but a simplification of some side or point of 
life, to stand or fall by its significant simplicity." 

A story is significant and simple because it is 
worked over by a person — because it is made his 
own. It is the individual element that makes it 
literary, giving it meaning and purpose, and an emo- 
tional coloring which shall distinguish it from other 
works of its kind. The emotional coloring is a more 
or less accurate reflection of the author's mood or 
temperament or settled character. Before the story 



GATHERING MATERIAL 23 

can take on this emotional coloring or tone, so es- 
sential to its literary vitality, it must really belong 
to its author and be a part of him. It is chiefly 
because a bit of experience is ours that we care to 
tell it or to write it as a story. Another's experience 
can never be quite so intimate as our own unless we 
are blessed with warm sympathy and perfect intui- 
tion. Thus it is that one's own experience is better 
material than all the outward facts which he can 
gather. He will, of course, see most clearly that 
which is within his range of vision. And he would 
do well to start with this, remembering that, except 
in writing romance, it is unwise to undertake por- 
trayal of that which is hopelessly beyond the bounds 
of his experience. For he must believe what he 
writes, for the time. That is, he must seem to have 
thorough confidence in his material as probable ex- 
perience. Says Cable, 1 "No author, from whatever 
heaven, earth, or hell of actual environment he may 
write, can produce a living narrative of motives, 
passions, and fates without having first felt the most 
of it and apprehended it all, in his own inner life." 
It is certainly the individual element that gives 
the breath of life. This does not mean that the 
author should be egoistic, in any sense of the word. 
He should, however, be sufficiently self-conscious 

1 "Afterthoughts of a Story-Teller," North American, 158: 16. 



24 THE SHORT-STORY 

and introspective to gauge other people's experiences 
by his own. This he cannot do unless he has lived 
a broad and deep imaginative life. He must be 
on the alert for new material — watchful, observant. 
He must make notes if he cannot trust his memory. 
He must brood over his material until it acquires 
a personal warmth, and adopt it for his own. He 
must enter sympathetically into the innermost* life 
of the creatures whom he has made to move across 
the stage of his imagination; for "a man may not 
describe humanity if he have not humanity within 
him." Only through sympathy and humankind- 
ness can the individual experience acquire the uni- 
versal interest that entitles it to rank as literature. 

THE NOTE-BOOK 

A large and miscellaneous note-book is of ines- 
timable value to the writer of fiction. No human 
memory is sufficiently comprehensive to retain in 
available shape even a small part of the material 
necessary for writing fiction. Impressions are very 
fleeting; and the imagination cannot always be 
driven back along the same road without the use of 
a spur. The student would do well, therefore, to 
keep a note-book in which he should jot down not 
only ideas on the theory of the short-story and im- 
pressions of stories which have especially interested 



GATHERING MATERIAL 25 

him, but more particularly all the material he has 
on hand for original work: names, traits, features, 
faces, characters; places suitable for story setting; 
interesting situations, incidents, anecdotes illustra- 
tive of character ; bits of speech that have dramatic 
force; ideas for the construction of ingenious plots; 
or, ideas and impressions which will serve as cen- 
tral themes for stories. 

A methodical person will have his note-book 
neatly classified. But the imaginative person is 
not always so precise in the arrangement of his 
productions as he is fertile in invention. A note- 
book is, or should be, essentially a private matter — 
its value, its service to the owner. And if the owner 
finds an easy, spontaneous, scattering note-book 
pleasant in the making and available for using, he 
should feel free to keep that kind of book. Many 
people are frightened away from preserving their 
experience in note-books by the idea that they must 
write something in them every day at a set time — a 
sort of soul-confession like a diary ; and many others, 
by the idea that they must make their notes trim, 
precise, and regular, as if they might at any time be 
exposed to the inspection of the public. But what 
would be drearier reading, after all, than a petrified, 
impersonal, correct note-book, should it ever come 
to light? 



26 THE SHORT-STORY 

A literary note-book that was of real value to its 
owner is Hawthorne's " English and American Notes." 
The American notes are especially free and easy, and 
particularly rich in story material. They are per- 
sonal, spontaneous, and without anything but a scat- 
tering chronological arrangement. The most poeti- 
cal fantasy may jostle an account of Hawthorne's 
"continual warfare with the squash-bugs"; or; a 
delicate symbolical idea for a tale, a homely narra- 
tive of how he was hit in the eye by a piece of 
wood which he was chopping. Hawthorne gathered 
peculiar names: Miss Asphyxia Davis; Flesh and 
Blood, a firm of butchers; Miss Polly Syllable, a 
schoolmistress. He jotted down chance phrases 
that occurred to him: "A life, generally of a grave 
hue, may be said to be embroidered with occasional 
sports and fantasies." He diligently gathered more 
details of costume and personal appearance than he 
could make actual use of in his stories : — 

" Madame Cutts, at the last of these entertain- 
ments, wore a black damask gown, and cuffs with 
double lace ruffles, velvet shoes, blue silk stockings, 
white and silver stomacher. The daughter and 
granddaughters in rich brocades and yellow satin. 
Old Major Cutts in brown velvet, laced with gold, 
and a large wig. . . . The ladies wore bell-hoops, 
high-heeled shoes, paste buckles, silk stockings, and 



GATHERING MATERIAL 27 

enormously high head-dresses, with lappets of Brus- 
sels lace hanging thence to the waist. . . . The 
date assigned to all this about 1690." * 

In short, every kind of material finds its place in 
Hawthorne's note-book. Much of it is trivial and 
of transient interest, and much of the really prom- 
ising literary material has never been reclaimed. 
But, on the other hand, we find brief jottings of the 
ideas that animated those symbolic stories which 
gave Hawthorne high rank among the half-dozen 
masters of short-story writing. 

1 " American Note-Book," 2 : 55. 



CHAPTER III 

THE MOTIVE AS THE SOURCE OF PLOT 

It is a familiar principle that a story must have 
plot; but where shall the plot come from? Some- 
thing in the author's experience, real or imagined, 
must furnish the plot-gf rrn Plot starts most com- 
monly with an idea originating in the impression 
made by a single incident, in a situation experienced 
or invented, in a chance mood or fancy, or in a con- 
ception of character. The starting-point for the 
plot may be called the story theme, the idea, the plot- 
germ, or the motive. By the term motive is meant 
whatever in the material has served as the spur or 
stimulus to write, the moving force of a story — in 
short, its reason for existence. It may be objected 
that many stories have no such kernel of meaning 
and, apparently, no reason for existence. This 
is very true. The magazines are crammed with un- 
significant stories fit only to fill an idle quarter of an 
hour or to rest a weary mind. But the "no-motive" 
story is a mere happen-so in fiction ; and the short- 
story that lays claim to rank as literature must have 
a real reason for existence. It must have a point. 

?3 



THE MOTIVE AS THE SOURCE OF PLOT 29 

The beginner in story-writing is very likely to 
mistake the meaning of plot and to believe that it 
requires as a starting-point a remarkable instance 
of luck, chance, or fate. The first plot assignment 
to a class in narration is likely to bring in varied 
accounts of young folks' pranks, such as baking a 
cotton pie, hiding a buggy under a straw-pile, or 
escorting a cow to the top of a public building. 
Arrived at the conclusion that trick and plot are not 
identical, the student may still prefer narratives of 
accidents, surprises, curious coincidences. Then 
comes the beginner's joy in the construction of 
ingenious plot, such as the story with a reversal. 
A clever story of this sort is readable, — some of 
Aldrich's are excellent (e.g. " Mar jorie Daw," A tlantic, 
31 : 407), — but it is not a story which appears better 
on a second reading. Surprises ill suffer repetition. 

The amateur on a hunt for unused material would 
possibly be overjoyed to run across ideas like these 
which Hawthorne jotted down : — 

"Two persons, by mutual agreement, to make 
their wills in each other's favor, then to wait im- 
patiently for one another's death, and both to be 
informed of the desired event at the same time. 
Both, in most joyous sorrow, hasten to be present at 
the funeral, meet, and find themselves both hoaxed.'' 
(" American Note-Book," p. 12.) " A fellow without 



30 THE SHORT-STORY 

money, having a hundred and seventy miles to go, 
fastened a chain and padlock to his legs, and lay 
down to sleep in a field. He was apprehended and 
carried gratis to a jail in the town whither he de- 
sired to go." ("American • Note-Book," p. 14.) 
But it is worth noting that Hawthorne used neither 
of these ideas for a plot, and that he never used plots 
of this sort. It would have been inconsistent with 
his conception of the aim of fiction. 

While the ingenious plot with a reversal or sur- 
prise — the hoax-plot — cannot be counted among 
the highest, there is one form of the ingenious plot 
which deserves a higher rank. The detective story is 
a real study in plot construction, involving the presen- 
tation of a situation and the reduction of that situa- 
tion to its causes. It differs from other plots in that 
it presents a mysterious situation and then works 
backward to its solution. The solution is the end. 
The detective plot is a puzzle solved. A few mas- 
ters have given it masterly treatment. Poe and his 
disciple, Doyle, have set themselves apart by their 
treatment of this plot form. The interest of "The 
Gold-Bug" and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" 
is not, however, to be confounded with that of the 
lurid "literature" so delectable to the romantic- 
minded youngster. The secret of the fascination 
of the cheap detective story lies not so much in the 



THE MOTIVE AS THE SOURCE OF PLOT 31 

fearful ingenuity of plot as in the thrilling situations 
independently developed in the action. Most of us 
have known a small boy who got his first detective 
story from some forbidden source and then sneaked 
off to the haymow or the attic or the highest seat in 
the old apple tree, there to experience delightful 
thrills over the blood-curdling adventures of Dia- 
mond Dick and Soapstone Sam. The life presented 
in those long columns of eye-wearing print is not 
his kind of life at all ; but it is life — thrilling life, 
crammed full of excitement. And, oblivious to the 
world about him, our young romancer plunges along 
with his hero, caring little that he sinks into a 
bottomless pit in one chapter and reappears in the 
next, only disfigured by a slight bruise on his marble 
forehead. One lock of his raven hair is a little 
awry, perhaps, but here he is on hand just in the 
nick of time, our gentleman of heroic adventure. 
The cheap detective story relies not at all on the 
probability of the plot as a whole (if indeed it can 
fairly be said to have a plot), 1 but merely on the 
interest of the separate situations. The masterly 
detective plot, on the other hand, is a genuine exer- 
cise in deductive logic dressed out in the form of 
fiction. 

1 An interesting account of the writing of sensational stories is 
quoted from the New York Sun in the Writer, August, 1903. 



32 THE SHORT-STORY 

A single incident may furnish the motive for a plot. 
That is to say, the main action may be found ready- 
made, and simply be recounted in such a way as to 
bring out the significance of the facts. Some of the 
best stories of Richard Harding Davis originated 
in incidents gathered from experience. " Octave 
Thanet" works in this way. Maupassant's pro- 
ductiveness may be traced back in part to the 
daily newspaper as a source of plot. The incident 
must, of course, be interpreted, subjectified, ren- 
dered significant by the author. And character 
must be invented to fit the incident, after its inter- 
pretation is determined. 

A chance imaginative impression may develop 
into a genuine story mood: "An old volume in a 
large library. Every one to be afraid to unclasp 
and open it, because it was said to be a book 
of magic." (Hawthorne, "American Note-Book," 
p. 14.) The hint was found too small a motive for 
a whole story, but is used to good advantage for im- 
pressionistic effect in "Doctor Heidegger's Experi- 
ment." " To make a story out of a scarecrow, giving 
it odd attributes," is the starting-point for the fan- 
tastic story, "Feathertop." 

One of Hawthorne's most successful stories, judged 
by modern tests, is the impressionistic sketch, "The 
White Old Maid." In view of the marked unity 



THE MOTIVE AS THE SOURCE OF PLOT 33 

of tone and atmosphere, and the striking suggestive- 
ness of the situation, it is interesting to discover the 
starting-point in a unified impression of character, 
requiring to be made plausible by presenting cir- 
cumstances : — 

"A change from a gay young girl to an old woman ; 
the melancholy events, the effects of which have 
clustered around her character, and gradually im- 
bued it with their influence, till she becomes a lover 
of sick-chambers, taking pleasure in receiving dy- 
ing breaths and in laying out the dead; also leav- 
ing her mind full of funeral reminiscences, and pos- 
sessing more acquaintances beneath the burial turf 
than above it." 

Sometimes a mere physical impression may be 
made significant: "A person with an ice-cold hand 
— his right hand, which people ever afterward 
remember when once they have grasped it." (Haw- 
thorne, "American Note-Book," p. 56.) Some- 
times the impression is psychological: "A dreadful 
secret to be communicated to several people of various 
characters, — grave or gay, — and they all to become 
insane, according to their characters, by the influ- 
ence of the secret. ..." "The influence of a pecul- 
iar mind, in close communion with another, to 
drive the latter into insanity." ("American Note- 
Book," p. 102.) 

D 



34 THE SHORT-STORY 

A strong story may be made from a psychological 
impression of an imaginary character : — 

"A man, virtuous in his general conduct, but 
committing habitually some monstrous crime, as 
murder, and doing this without the sense of guilt, 
but with a peaceful conscience, habit, probably, 
reconciling him to it; but something (for instance, 
discovery) occurs to make him sensible of his enor- 
mity. His horror then." Stevenson's " Mar kheim," 
a powerful psychological study of a mood, must 
have originated from a similar conception. 

The development of such hints as these would 
naturally result in the story of a mood. Most of 
Poe's effects are due to the working out of a mood 
in such a way as to stamp it most vividly on the 
reader's imagination. Plot there is always in Poe; 
but the plot is, with two or three notable exceptions, 
kept subordinate to the mood. Details of plot are 
slight; the characters, mere puppets. All is ar- 
ranged to work out a single preconceived impres- 
sion. "The Black Cat," "The Tell-Tale Heart," 
"The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Cask of Amon- 
tillado," "Berenice," "Ligeia," "The Masque of 
the Red Death," and "The Fall of the Melancholy 
House of Usher" excellently portray the tragic, 
weird, and sombre moods peculiar to Poe's genius. 
Kipling, Maupassant, Balzac, Hawthorne, Harte, 



THE MOTIVE AS THE SOURCE OF PLOT 35 

and Garland, all make the presentation of a mood 
one of the essential features of their best short- 
stories. The stories of the weird, the horrible, the 
fantastic, the romantic, the supernatural, depend 
for their effect upon the suggestion of a mood. 

Closely related to the story of a single mood is 
that of a special sentiment, such as the pathetic, the 
tragic, and the humorous story. The various emo- 
tions of friendship, love, and devotion are also suffi- 
cient motives for a story. 

Legitimate, also, is the realistic motive of picturing 
faithfully the life of a special class, profession, lo- 
cality, or time. Here the aim may go no farther 
than artistic representation, or it may include that of 
information. The best stories of this class include 
also a sympathetic interpretation of a bit of human 
nature or human life; so that they are not only 
artistic and instructive, but broadly humanitarian 
in spirit. 

The germ of the modern impressionistic story 
is very frequently an imagined situation, such as 
these, taken from Hawthorne's " American Note- 
Book":— 

"The situation of a man in the midst of a crowd, 
yet as completely in the power of another, life and 
all, as if they two were in the deepest solitude.' ' 
(p. 105.) 



36 THE SHORT-STORY 

"The race of mankind to be swept away, leaving 
all their cities and works. Then another human 
pair to be placed in the world, endowed with native 
intelligence like Adam and Eve, but knowing noth- 
ing of their predecessors or of their own nature and 
destiny. They, perhaps, to be described as work- 
ing out this knowledge by their sympathy with what 
they saw, and by their own feelings." (p. 22.) 

"A rich man leaves by will his mansion and 
estate to a poor couple. They remove into it and 
find there a darksome servant whom they are for- 
bidden by will to turn away. He becomes a tor- 
ment to them ; and, in the finale, he turns out to be 
the former master of the estate." (p. 32.) 

Contrast furnishes the motive for many a strong 
story of Maupassant's. It is the force of Steven- 
son's "A Lodging for the Night"; it adds much to 
the effectiveness of Harte's "Outcasts of Poker 
Flat." It is in the story of character that contrast 
is most valuable. Hawthorne's notes show many 
conceptions of character involving contrasting ele- 
ments, such as this : — 

"A father-confessor, — his reflections on charac- 
ter, and the contrast of the inward man with the out- 
ward, as he looks around on his congregation, all 
whose secret sins are known to him." (" American 
Note-Book," 2 : 56.) 



THE MOTIVE AS THE SOURCE OF PLOT 37 

In "A Second-Rate Woman," Kipling gives us 
such a contrast in the unexpected revelation of no- 
bility of character (the more unexpected in Kipling 
because it is of a woman). In "A Bank Fraud" 
he has achieved a double contrast. Reggie in him- 
self is a surprise as he develops, and the contrast 
between Reggie and Riley makes the surprise 
emphatic. "Up the Coulee," one of Hamlin Gar- 
land's strongest stories, is founded upon a contrast 
between two characters. To the very last para- 
graph the story is a contrast between the weak man 
whom circumstances have bolstered into success 
and the man of native strength whom circumstances 
have cheated of his life's chance. Returning to find 
his brother cramped and soured by the narrow 
and difficult situation, the successful man endeavors 
to gain the other's good will and to put himself 
back into the old conditions. The effort is without 
avail. The problem is not solved, but the impres- 
sion left with the reader at the close is that of the 
inevitable clash of two widely differing tempera- 
ments forcibly brought together: — 

"The two men stood there face to face, hands 
clasped, the one fair-skinned, full-lipped, handsome 
in his neat suit; the other tragic, sombre in his 
softened mood, his large, long, rugged Scotch face 
bronzed with sun and scarred with wrinkles that had 



38 THE SHORT-STORY 

histories, like the sabre cuts of a veteran, the record 
of his battles." 

The half-hearted reconciliation does not remove 
the reader's impression of the hopelessness of the 
situation. He feels called upon to blame some one for 
the harshness of it, but is at a loss how to pronounce 
his moral judgment. 

"Up the Coulee" is not merely a contrast between 
two men; it is a real problem plot. In a problem 
plot, incidents, as well as characters, are chosen after 
the main fact. The situation is presented like an 
algebraic problem. It may or may not be solved 
within the story. The situation must be a strong 
one, well worth solving. It must not be baldly 
thrust upon the reader, as in the beginning of a 
student's theme: "John Long had two ruling pas- 
sions, and it waited to be seen which was to domi- 
nate him." 

Maupassant's " A Coward," " The Necklace," 
and "A Piece of String," Balzac's "A Passion in the 
Desert," Poe's "Bertrand B," and Kipling's "Bimi" 
are excellent examples of the problem plot. A 
unique problem is presented in the August Pearson's 
for 1903, in the story of a white man who gradually 
turned black, and of the resulting behavior of his 
friends toward him. 

The most common form of the problem plot is 



THE MOTIVE AS THE SOURCE OF PLOT 39 

that of the triangular relation sometimes called the 
three-leaved clover plot, concerning two men and one 
woman or two women and one man. It was Will- 
iam Black, I believe, who said that he could not 
understand why writers were ever at a loss for new 
plots, because, so long as there were two girls and a 
man or two men and a girl in the world, there would 
be material for an infinite number of novels. Such 
a relationship furnishes, sometimes, a fascinating 
problem, involving the play of passion, jealousy, dan- 
ger, fear, surprise, remorse, repentance, sacrifice, etc., 
arising out of the sheer force of the situation. 

The problem plot may involve an ethical motive, 
as in Hamlin Garland's "A Branch Road." This^ 
is the story of a country boy who is teased by his 
sweetheart's flirtations and goes away in wounded 
pride. Years later he returns, to find her married 
to his rival and leading a miserable life, abused by 
husband and mother-in-law, and the centre of con- 
tinual low squabbles. She has lost her beauty and 
is worn and old — a purely pathetic figure. But 
Will is true to her and proposes what seems to him the 
only way out of the situation. Taking the youngest 
child, Will and Agnes set out together. The author 
pronounces no ethical judgment on any part of the 
action ; but, in closing the gloomy tale, he does give 
us a rather significant glimpse of sky: "The sun 



4 o THE SHORT-STORY 

shone on the dazzling, rustling wheat; the fathom- 
less sky, blue as a sea, bent above them — and the 
world lay before them." The situation is significant, 
compelling ; and the reader inevitably follows Will 
and Agnes further and predicts for them a wretched 
or a happy fate. 

The story of a crisis in the life of a character is one 
of the highest forms of short-story. It is the form 
most dependent on motive or idea. Rarely this will 
be a religious motive, occasionally a spiritual one; 
but most frequently it is simply ethical. The 
ethical motive may be of importance only for the 
individual, or it may also affect society. The story 
of purpose which is animated by a social motive 
presents questions of the day in the guise of fiction : 
strikes, labor, education, philanthropy, politics, and 
municipal problems. Sometimes the purpose is, to 
reveal conditions; sometimes it is, to suggest a 
remedy. The latter aim is somewhat aside from the 
purpose of story- writing, but it has proved a popu- 
lar source of interest in our day. 

Sometimes the motive of a story is an abstract 
idea which can be expressed in a phrase, a sentence, 
or a brief paragraph. The theme of " Silas Marner " 
may be expressed as "the influence of the love of a 
child on the lonely and embittered nature of a hermit. 
It is fully written out within the story : — 



THE MOTIVE AS THE SOURCE OF PLOT 41 

"In old days there were angels who came and took 
men by the hand and led them away from the city of 
destruction. We see no white- winged angels now. 
But yet men are led away from threatening destruc- 
tion: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them 
forth gently toward a calm and bright land, so that 
they look no more backward ; and the hand may be 
a little child's." 

Almost identical is the theme of Mary Wilkins 
Freeman's "The Solitary": only it is a broken- 
down consumptive who reclaims the hermit. In 
Kipling's "Baa-Baa Black Sheep," the clew to the 
degeneration of Punch is given thus: "By the 
light of the sordid knowledge she had revealed to 
him, he paid her back full tale." Similarly, in 
Ruth Stuart's "A Note of Scarlet," the "moral" 
comes out gently in the degenerate Melissa's sigh: 
"Deary, deary me, how far wrong one bad act will 
take a person ! Only three days ago I stopped 
counting my strands." The motive of Hawthorne's 
character study, "Ethan Brand," is clearly desig- 
nated : — 

"Thus Ethan Brand became a fiend. He be- 
gan to be so from the moment that his moral 
nature had ceased to keep the pace of improvement 
with his intellect." 

It must not, however, be hastily concluded that 



42 THE SHORT-STORY 

the story motive, the inspiring force, is always 
identical with its moral, even if it should have a 
distinct expression of a moral. The moral to "The 
Prophetic Pictures" is appended, with less than 
Hawthorne's usual delicacy, to the close: — 

"Is there not a deep moral in the tale? Could 
the result of one or all our deeds be shadowed forth 
and set before us, some would call it fate and hurry 
onward, others be swept along by their passionate 
desires, and none be turned aside by the prophetic 
pictures." 

But the true imaginative motive — a larger one 
than this — is expressed on the page before : — 

"The painter seemed to hear the step of Destiny 
approaching behind him on its progress toward its 
victims. A strange thought darted into his mind. 
Was not his own the form in which that Destiny 
had embodied itself, and he a chief agent of the 
coming evil which he had foreshadowed?" 

The use of the abstract idea, the spiritual truth, 

\ jthe moral teaching, as a source of story plot may be 

best studied in the symbolic stories of Hawthorne. 

In the "American Note-Book" (p. 296), Hawthorne 

writes : — 

"The semblance of a human face to be found on 
the side of a mountain, or in the fracture of a small 
stone, by a lusus naturce. The face is an object of 



THE MOTIVE AS THE SOURCE OF PLOT 43 

curiosity for years and centuries, and by and by a 
boy is born, whose features gradually assume the 
aspect of that portrait. At some critical juncture 
the resemblance is found to be perfect. A prophecy 
may be connected." 

This forms the working plot for "The Great Stone 
Face"; but, by comparing the impression made by 
this note with that made by the story, one cannot fail 
to discover the importance of the addition of the 
prophecy. The point of the story lies in the sym- 
bolism. 

The symbolic motive in Hawthorne is saved from 
abstractness by being conveyed through appropriate 
physical images, such as the scarlet letter embroi- 
dered on the breast of Georgiana, the bright butterfly 
in "The Artist of the Beautiful," and the little 
hand on the cheek of Aylmer's wife ("The Birth- 
mark"). Such an idea is jotted down in its most 
general form : 1 — 

"To symbolize moral or spiritual disease by 
disease of the body; as thus, — when a person com- 
mitted any sin, it might appear in some form on the 
body, — this to be brought out." 

"Lady Eleanor e's Mantle" is such a story of 
poetical retribution. Stricken with smallpox from 
the fatally infectious mantle, the once haughty 

1 " American Note-Book," 2 : 59. 



44 THE SHORT-STORY 

Lady Eleanore cries out: "The curse of Heaven 
hath stricken me because I would not call man my 
brother nor woman sister. I wrapped myself in 
pride as in a mantle and scorned the sympathies of 
nature, and therefore has nature made this wretched 
body the medium of a dreadful sympathy. You are 
avenged, they are all avenged, Nature is avenged." 

Hawthorne seems to have been especially impressed 
with the idea of retribution for tampering with any 
natural law. We see the idea in its extreme form in 
the following incident : — 

"The case quoted in Combe's Physiology of a 
young man of great talents and profound knowledge 
of chemistry, who had in view some new discovery of 
importance. In order to put his mind into the high- 
est possible activity, he shut himself up for several 
successive days, and used various methods of excite- 
ment. He had a singing-girl, he drank spirits, 
smelled penetrating odors, sprinkled Cologne water 
round the room, etc. Eight days thus passed when 
he was seized with a fit of frenzy which terminated 
in mania." 

There is a grim irony in these facts which reminds 
one of the outline plot of "The Ambitious Guest," 
one of Hawthorne's strongest stories with the fate 
motive. We can imagine Hawthorne commenting 
on the young chemist's frustrated ambition as he 



THE MOTIVE AS THE SOURCE OF PLOT 45 

does of the incident in "Rappaccini's Daughter" 
as only another instance of the " fatality of all such 
efforts of perverted wisdom." "Ethan Brand" 
and "The Birthmark" present other phases of the 
same theme. 

The idea for "The Birthmark" appears in the 
"American Note-Book" (p. 206) in this shape : — 

"A person to be the death of his beloved in trying 
to raise her to more than mortal perfection ; yet this 
should be a comfort to him for having aimed so 
highly and holily." The whole force of the tragedy 
could hardly have been present in the author's mind 
when he made that note. It would seem as if the 
story had grown vastly in the making, and that the 
author's sense of the fitness of things had led him to 
eliminate from the story the somewhat jarring note 
of consolation through high and holy aim. The 
general theme is announced outright, early in the 
story : — 

"In those days, when the comparatively recent 
discovery of electricity and other kindred mysteries 
of nature seemed to open new paths into the region 
of miracle, it was not unusual for the love of science 
to rival the love of woman in its depth and absorbing 
energy." 

And, more definitely, the application is made to the 
characters of the story : — 



46 THE SHORT-STORY 

" Aylmer's love for his young wife might prove the 
stronger of the two, but it could only be by inter- 
twining itself with his love of science and uniting 
the strength of the latter to its own." 

The symbolism of the fairy hand is of importance 
for the plot. "The crimson hand expressed the 
includible grip in which mortality clutches the high- 
est and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into 
kindred with the lowest, and even with the very 
brutes." Aylmer regarded it as "the symbol of 
his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and 'death," 
whereas it proved to be a the bond by which an 
angelic spirit kept itself in union with a mortal 
frame." On the interpretation of this symbol 
hangs the tragedy. 

We have in " Rappaccini's Daughter" an ethical 
problem of modern application, if not of modern 
treatment. It is an experiment in poisons — "a 
lovely woman nourished with poisons from her 
birth upward, until her whole nature was so imbued 
with them that she herself had become the most 
deadly poison in existence. Poison was her element 
of life. With that rich perfume of her breath she 
blasted the very air." It is the story of a father who 
"was not restrained from offering up a child in this 
horrible manner as the victim of his insane zeal for 
The theme is tragic, and the story charged 



THE MOTIVE AS THE SOURCE OF PLOT 47 

with emotion, rather than abstract. Indeed, I think 
it might almost be called Hawthorne's nearest 
approach to dramatic characterization within the 
limits of the short-story. 

Such abstract ideas and symbolic motives as 
Hawthorne's are not by any means essential to 
short-stories. As a matter of fact, a young writer 
would have difficulty in making such themes suffi- 
ciently concrete to suit our modern tastes. But 
Hawthorne's stories may all be profitably studied; 
for they rarely lack a definite and tangible idea, 
which, though it may be expressed outright, is 
seldom crudely put. The point to be remembered 
is, that a story cannot take high rank unless it has an 
inspiring motive of some sort to furnish it a reason 
for existence. 



CHAPTER IV 

PLOT 

Plot is the management of the continuous line 
of action underlying the whole progress of the story. 
It concerns the sequence of events. In a simple 
tale of adventure, where the interest depends almost 
altogether on the intrinsic worth of the material, the 
problem of arrangement hardly appears. Propor- 
tion is here the main consideration. The problem 
is, how to make the action constantly progress and 
increase in intensity toward an effective climax. 
The tale of adventure is almost without plot, be- 
cause its effect is nothing more than that of a nar- 
rative of interesting fact. 

But in every story which has a motive other and 
higher than that of incident, plot is of importance. 
For the action of such a story is of interest as illus- 
trating a special motive; and incidents and events 
must be rearranged in such a way as to bring out 
the author's meaning most effectively. In the story 
with a distinct meaning and purpose, the chronologi- 
cal order of events must give way to the logical, if the 

4 8 



PLOT 49 

two do not happen to coincide. And in almost every 
case, the actual proportion of events must give way 
to dramatic foreshortening and expansion. For 
plot becomes here the outline of the theme — the 
plan for working out an idea. 

In its broadest sense, plot is plan. As such, it is 
essential to every story. A certain class of writers 
who aim to represent little bits of real life without 
caring especially to render their significance say that 
plot is non-essential. They say, too, that there is no 
such thing as plot in real life. It is very true that 
most experience does not fall naturally into plot 
arrangement. Once in a while that happens, but 
oftener the plot fails of its logical outcome. Still, 
it is the story-teller's business to pick out the plot 
in life, and, where it fails, to complete it with his 
art. To forbid the writer to fashion his material 
in such a way as to reveal ' his meaning and his 
spirit is as absurd as to advise the young writer of the 
didactic essay to jot down all his feelings, thoughts, 
and fancies in the exact order of their occurrence, 
without reference to their relevance or their impor- 
tance for his particular theme. No kind of literature, 
whether of thought or of feeling, can be made with- 
out especial attention to arrangement of material 
with reference to purpose. If action is aimless, or 
events accidental, the story- writer must discard them 



5o THE _SHORT-STORY 

or bend them to his purpose. He is not bound to 
transfer the whole of human life — that would be 
impossible. Human actions are interesting only as 
they tend toward the realization of some end. There 
is too much of the aimless and the commonplace 
in real life; we can all see more of it than we wish 
without betaking ourselves to the world of fiction. 
The reader has a right to demand that the author 
pick out only the significant and essential; for this 
is the only worthy matter. 

If there is any doubt as to the worth of plot, con- 
sider for a moment the effect of the stories of Henry 
James, William Howells, and others of their school. 
Here we have exquisite analysis of character and 
motive, fine description, and dialogue polished almost 
beyond recognition. Yet who but a pedant will pre- 
tend to the keenest interest in them? Few people 
would sit up half a night because they couldn't bear 
to leave the story. Such stories have a real interest, 
but it is of a pale and intellectual sort, because there 
is little stirring action and almost no attempt at 
climax. The works of the psychological realists are 
certainly not improved by their lack of movement 
and denouement. The short-story should have out- 
come. Some element of the situation should be 
changed in the progress of the narrative. 

Plot involves climax, but not necessarily surprise. 



PLOT 51 

If a writer is ingenious enough to surprise us at the 
end of a story, it is well enough. But if all stories 
depended for their success on ingenuity of plot, story 
literature would rapidly decay. The best stories 
depend very little on the element of surprise. They 
have emphatic climax; but climax means a steady 
heightening of interest to its full close, rather than 
the mental or emotional jerk occasioned by surprise. 
Novelty and interest in the situations throughout 
the story, with an increasing interest in the denoue- 
ment, are the essential demands of plot. 

Complexity of plot is extremely undesirable for 
the short-story. In rare instances it succeeds very 
well, as in Poe's "The Gold-Bug." But even here 
characters must be sacrificed almost entirely to plot 
purposes. "The Gold-Bug" is the best of its kind, 
but not the best kind of short-story. The simple 
plot is most natural and often the most powerful. 
It is broader, deeper, more lifelike than the ingen- 
ious or complex plot. It is also best adapted to the 
scope and purpose of the short-story. The short- 
story must be dominated by a single purpose or 
meaning, and must produce strict unity of impres- 
sion. To this end, singleness of plot is necessary. 
The story has no space for episode. Only a hint 
at outside history is allowable. An adept at hinting 
can furnish by this means all the variety needed in so 



$2 THE SHORT-STORY 

short a piece of work. And, by avoiding the com- 
plex plot (which necessarily involves digressions) 
he can make all the lines of interest run straight to 
their single goal. A double plot is rarely successful, 
because it means a division of interest and con- 
sequently a lack of unity. For the short-story of 
the modern type, simplicity, unity, brevity, and sug- 
gestive force are the qualities most to be desired; 
and the complex and interwoven plot is therefore to 
be shunned. 

The beginner in story-writing generally overes- 
timates the value of the novel and the clever plot. 
If he were wise, he would pay more attention to the 
filling in. The poorest story in the newspaper often 
shows considerable fertility of invention, but with a 
fatal lack of filling and of style. The outline of the 
greatest story might read like the bald sentences of a 
primer. Save for purposes of analysis, the plot 
cannot be separated from the story as a whole. A 
story cannot be analyzed alive. It is the motive 
rather than the bare outline of the action that gives 
the story its originality and its final worth. Are 
there only thirteen plots? There are a hundred 
times as many motives. Change one element, and 
you have modified the whole. 

In constructing the plot or plan, the writer must 
begin at the other end, since the end determines the 



PLOT 53 

course of the narrative. Poe says: "Nothing is 
more clear than that every plot worth the name must 
be elaborated to its denouement before anything be 
attempted with the pen. It is only with the denoue- 
ment constantly in view that we can give a plot its 
indispensable air of consequence or causation by 
making the incidents, and especially the tone at all 
points, tend to the development of the intention." 

A consideration of the main incident will keep the 
writer from admitting dry, uninteresting, and mean- 
ingless details. It will also insure his admitting all 
the necessary matter. The ingenious story, for 
example, must have the conditions presented fairly 
and fully, if the surprise is to count for anything. 
In "A Love Knot" {Cosmopolitan, May, 1906) 
the probability of the whole plot is sacrificed to the 
effect of surprise, so that the story doubles back upon 
itself. Even though the end comes with a shock, 
it should seem on reflection to be a possible, even 
a natural, ending — that is, it must have been pre- 
pared for. Preparation is a fine art, requiring care 
and delicate workmanship, and leisure on the part of 
both writer and reader. We may question whether 
the art is not quietly passing out of existence. 

The classical unities may be partially applied to 
short-story plot. We cannot place any definite 
time limit. We can say, however, that, the briefer 



54 THE SHORT-STORY 

the period of time covered in actual narration, the 
more powerful the story will be. We cannot say 
there must be no gaps in the action of a story, but 
we can say that the gaps should be very few. The 
unity of place can be more strictly enforced. For 
a change of scene generally means an undesirable 
complexity of plot. The unity of action is the 
one indispensable unity of plot. The stories of 
Maupassant and Poe show the power of singleness 
of conception. Excellent studies in unity of time 
and place are: Stevenson's "Markheim," Poe's 
"The Masque of the Red Death," and Kipling's 
''Little Tobrah." 

The method of short-story differs essentially from 
that of mere narrative in this : the story is conceived 
not as a mere continuous run of events, but in a few 
striking scenes, more or less closely joined. The 
lack of such dramatic crystallization into units of 
action often makes amateur work weak and in- 
effective. The main incidents do not stand out in 
relief, but all are buried under a muddy stream of 
narrative. From a study of the drama one can gain 
an idea of the completeness of scene that may be 
secured from suggestive treatment. He need not 
servilely imitate the methods of the drama ; for there 
is no reason why he should not avail himself of the 
opportunity to use connecting narrative where he 



PLOT 55 

needs it. But he can learn to conceive the action in 
a series of developing scenes or situations. These 
should be few in number, and such that one grows 
naturally out of the preceding and leads naturally 
into the next. Otherwise the connecting narrative 
will be a patchwork and a blemish. 

In considering the mass of material, one of the 
most important problems is the location of the story 
in point of time. Most people are tempted to begin 
on a full scale too far back in the history of the story, 
instead of stationing themselves at a good central 
point, where the early beginnings can be seen in 
dim perspective as small as they really are for story 
purposes. 

Then comes the problem of arrangement of events. 
In the simple story of incident, the question of method 
is correspondingly simple. The only rule that can 
be laid down is, that the action shall progress some- 
what rapidly, without digression, toward a climax. 
Proportion is the main consideration. In most cases 
the main incident must be rilled in with more de- 
tail. Or, if simplicity of climax seems more desirable, 
details may be introduced shortly before the climax 
for the sake of securing suspense. The question of 
method in this type of story involves nothing more 
than compression or expansion of the action. 

But where there are several characters and the 



56 THE SHORT-STORY 

action is complex and the motive becomes signifi- 
cant, the problem of arrangement appears. Several 
characters are in action at the same time; but only 
one person's actions can be given detailed representa- 
tion at one point of time. From the nature of lan- 
guage it is difficult to place in single file events 
which occurred side by side. Fortunately, all that 
is necessary is to secure the effect of reality. The 
events need not, then, be related in the exact order 
of their occurrence. They must be so ordered that 
they shall seem to have occurred in their real 
chronological order. 

Climax is not the only consideration in securing 
emphasis for the story which has any complexity of 
plot. Lights and shades must show in the delicately 
varying intensity of the action. The slow and quiet 
passages make effective background for the quick 
and thrilling crises of the action. It is hard to deter- 
mine where to go slowly and where to hurry the 
action. But we are pretty well agreed that it is 
crude to narrate as Defoe did now and then, skim- 
ming an incident rapidly before narrating it in detail. 
Suspense is needful at some point in the story. But 
sometimes it is pleasing and sometimes it is exas- 
perating to be teased by a suspense of interest. 
No rules can be laid down here. The answer is 
different for every story and every part of a story. 



PLOT 57 

It is safe to say, however, that any climax of inter- 
est in a story should be marked by a quickening of 
action, and it may be prepared for by a slight 
retarding. The means of varying action are more 
or less mechanical. Action may be checked by 
using many words and including many details ; by 
abundance of description and analysis; by intro- 
ducing dialogue which does not carry forward the 
main line of incident. Action may be hastened by 
depending on suggestion rather than enumeration 
of details; by skilful selection and wise omission; 
by compressed, terse sentences and effective diction. 
In leaving the general subject of plot for the 
details of mechanism, it must be confessed that all 
theoretical rules for making plots may prove, in 
practice, wooden. And inasmuch as the reason for 
plot is, to secure a greater interest in the theme, 
the writer is at perfect liberty to disregard all theories 
of plot if, by so doing, he can secure this increased 
interest. 



CHAPTER V 

MECHANISM 

I. The Beginning 

In so brief a piece of work as the short-story, the 
first impression and the last are of supreme impor- 
tance, and there is little opportunity to redeem a 
bad beginning. Here the reader's taste must be 
consulted, rather than the author's ease. The story 
must begin where it has some, interest, even if it 
would have been more convenient to begin some- 
where else. An appreciation of the power of sug- 
gestive brevity has conspired together with the hurry 
of a busy age to shorten greatly the introduction to 
the story. Irving and Hawthorne and Poe indulged 
sometimes in elaborate and finely wrought para- 
graphs of introduction. These are instinctively 
shunned by clever writers of magazine fiction in our 
day. By the cutting down of introduction the short- 
story has gained in brevity, compression, and sug- 
gestive power; and it has acquired the ability to 
catch the reader's attention with a rush. Whether 
it has not lost something of great value in thepains- 

58 



MECHANISM 59 

taking setting of a background subtly harmonizing 
with the story motive or the story mood, is an open 
question. The fact remains, however, that the pres- 
ent day fashion says short introductions will be used. 
A distinctively modern device for catching the 
attention quickly is that of beginning with a bit of 
conversation. This is a good plan, if the writer can 
then go forward with his narrative, giving the nec- 
essary preliminaries in retrospect through dialogue 
or simply through dramatic suggestion. But the 
device becomes a cheap trap for snaring the atten- 
tion when the writer is compelled to proceed from a 
thrilling speech to a prosaic return. The reader has 
a right to feel indignant or amused at the author 
who gives him a remark or two of startling interest, 
informs him that Philip Leighton, the speaker, 
stood on the bank of the Olentangy with a loaded 
revolver in his hand, and leaves him in that perilous 
position while he goes on to tell how Philip Leighton's 
ancestors came over in the Mayflower. When a be- 
ginner has once turned off the main road of a story, 
he experiences infinite difficulty in getting back. 
Sometimes he is reduced to the bald expedient of re- 
tracing his steps to the cross-roads and starting off in 
a new direction : " And it is this same Charles that we 
find Elizabeth inquiring about this Sunday morning." 
This sentence is sufficient in itself to indicate that 



60 THE SHORT-STORY 

the story was begun at the wrong point, and that 
the author then tried to proceed both ways at once. 
That a conversational beginning near the heart of the 
story can successfully suggest the situation, without 
these false starts and returns, is proved by such 
stories as Kipling's "Story of the Gadsbys," Hope's 
"Dolly Dialogues," and Ollivant's "The Lord, and 
the Lady's Glove." * But it takes considerable prac- 
tice in writing to acquire the knack of introducing 
necessary explanation or implying it by dialogue, 
without clogging the action of the story. 

The tendency toward realism is partly responsible 
for the modern habit of beginning in the thick of the 
story. Zola starts well along in the story, with a 
scene of energy, hurry, and excitement. He gives a 
brisk announcement of the place and the time of day, 
and then whirls rapidly into the story. It is more 
logical and more orderly to begin as far back as is 
necessary to give the preconditions of the story; 
but it is more natural and more convincing to strike 
quickly into the middle of the story. For, in real 
life, it is often so that we are plunged into contact 
with an interesting situation. And it is so that we 
come to learn one another's history. Such a practice 
also does away with the possibility of the wholly 
needless, unprogressive introductions which merely 

1 McClure's, February, 1902. 



MECHANISM 61 

serve the writer as a means for getting up his steam. 
Such an introduction as this merely marks time : — 

" While I was a student at the university, things 
happened which will never fade from my memory. 
But more lasting than all the others are the recollec- 
tions of my senior year." 

The beginner is often tempted to include within 
the story a train of moralizing which may have pre- 
ceded the conception of the story in his own mind 
as a preliminary mental process. Possibly he hopes 
to give the keynote thus. It is doubtful whether an 
unknown author could strike an editor or even an 
uncritical reader through such a beginning as 
Kipling's in " Three and — an Extra": — 

" After marriage arrives a reaction, sometimes a 
big, sometimes a little one; but it comes sooner or 
later, and must be tided over by both parties if they 
desire the rest of their lives to go with the current." 
He uses the same sort of introduction in ''Thrown 
Away": — 

"To rear a boy under what parents call the 'shel- 
tered-life system' is, if the boy must go into the world 
and fend for himself, not wise." 

Amateurs dare not mimic this device. Kipling 
knew he was indulging in a mannerism, and more 
than once he deliberately calls attention to his little 
text, as in "The Conversion of Aurelian McGoggin" : 



62 THE SHORT-STORY 

"This is not a tale exactly. It is a Tract; and I 
am immensely proud of it. Making a Tract is a 
Feat." But it is only the extraordinary writer who 
can juggle with all the laws of composition and then 
come off triumphant. The ordinary writer who 
should produce a tract in the guise of fiction, even 
without frank mention of the fact in starting, would 
be in danger of losing his readers as soon as they had 
sniffed his purpose. A safe rule for the beginner is, 
that the expository beginning, whether it be moral- 
izing or mere generalizing, should be avoided, and 
that the introduction should comprise only true 
narrative material. 

In the chapter on Setting, it will be shown that 
long descriptions of scenery are undesirable unless 
the scenery is vitally important for the story. Set 
descriptions of characters at the beginning become 
unattractive just as soon as they grow lengthy. 
Remembering the modern taste for brevity, the wise 
writer will dispense as much as possible with pure 
description as well as pure explanation, and proceed 
at once with narrative. 

The normal introduction to a story may contain 
indication of the time, the place, the preliminary 
events which are essential to the understanding of the 
situation; or, it may comprise names, descriptions, 
traits and relationships of characters — any or all of 



MECHANISM 63 

these in combination. These basal facts which 
must be given somehow are true narrative material, 
though they draw on description and exposition for 
assistance. 

These facts must not be baldly listed, but must 
be given in a concise and interesting way. They 
should seem to come in easily and gracefully How 
painfully awkward is this amateurish stage-bow: 
"My brother and I were returning home late one 
July day when the following little adventure hap- 
pened." 

A pompous beginning is no less repellent to the 
average reader than the awkward efforts of the 
amateur. A short-story which began in anything 
like the manner of James's "The Tragic Muse" 
would probably not be widely read. A novel has 
some chance to redeem itself after a beginning of this 
sort : — 

"The people of England have made it no secret 
that those of England, as a general thing, are, to 
their perception, an inexpressive and speechless 
race, unaddicted to modifying the bareness of juxta- 
position by verbal or other concessions." A novel 
might even survive the following initial description 
of its characters : — 

"No particular tension of the visual sense would 
have been required to embrace the characters of the 



64 THE SHORT-STORY 

four persons in question. As a solicitation of the 
eye on definite grounds, they too constituted a suc- 
cessful plastic fact." But the beginning of a short- 
story should be unmistakably clear and simple, 
charged with a definite, even obvious meaning, 
and promising an interesting story. 

The most common drawback to the introduction 
is dulness. This beginning is neither good nor bad 
in itself, but worthless for the story because it is 
essentially commonplace and uninviting : — 

"It was late one afternoon in November when 
Grace Marsh alighted from the train at Bell view 
station. She was a teacher in the school at Wood- 
ton, and a few days' vacation had given her the chance 
to make an unexpected visit to her aunt's country 
home." 

A study of Poe's beginnings will show that the 
introductory paragraph may give so much informa- 
tion as is absolutely necessary, not only without dul- 
ness, but in such a way as to set the story tone and 
draw the reader into the situation with the rapidity 
of thought. In "The Pit and the Pendulum" the 
mood is struck at once, and many of the necessary 
preliminaries implied in the single word inquisi- 
torial : — 

"I was sick, sick unto death, with that long agony, 
and when they at length unbound me and I was 



MECHANISM 65 

permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving 
me. The sentence, the dread sentence of death, 
was the last of distinct accentuation which reached 
my ears. After that, the sound of the inquisito- 
rial voices merged in one dreamy, indeterminate 
hum." 

An extraordinary beginning, but furnishing ex- 
cellent preparation for a fantastic story, is that of 
"The Black Cat": — 

"For the most wild, yet most homely narrative 
which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor 
solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect 
it in a case where my very senses reject their own 
evidence. Yet mad am I not, and very surely do 
I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I 
would unburden my soul." 

We have in "The Tell-Tale Heart" a similar 
preparation, but rather a finer one, inasmuch as it 
subtly but certainly suggests the one essential fact 
of the tale — the narrator gone mad through con- 
science : — 

"True! nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I 
had been and am ; but why will you say I am mad ? 
The disease had sharpened my senses, not dulled 
them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. 
I heard all things in the heaven and the earth. I 
heard many things in hell. How then am I mad? 



66 THE SHORT-STORY 

Hearken ! and observe how healthily, how calmly, I 
can tell you the whole story." 

Such a beginning is felt by the reader as an inte- 
gral part of the story. This should be the effect of 
every introduction. 

II. The Point of View 

The form into which the narrative shall be cast 
would best be determined by the author's attitude 
toward his characters and his incidents. Save for 
humorous comment and for analytic rendering of a 
mood, the first person narrative is preeminently 
awkward. The amateur who uses it stands in 
danger of giving the impression that he is continually 
blundering out in front of his camera: so that the 
result is a patch of a story marred here and there by 
a grotesque enlargement of some portion of his own 
anatomy. Unless one is writing a story of humorous 
intent or endeavoring to dissect a mood, he is bound 
to experience difficulty in making the first person 
narrator of any interest without making him seem 
egotistic. In a dialogue, if one reports himself as 
saying a good or clever thing, it looks egotistic ; and 
if he goes to the other extreme, the narrative grows 
dull. And it is almost impossible to describe one's 
self successfully. To be sure, the heroine of a story 



MECHANISM 67 

in a newspaper introduces herself in this way, 
"Men raved of my beauty." But the statement is 
hardly convincing — certainly it causes no thrill of 
sympathetic admiration. Only a person gifted with 
such thorough self-confidence that he can enjoy 
the process of self-revelation as much as he expects 
the reader to, can make much headway with it. 
Clara Morris seems to get genuine enjoyment out of 
reminiscent sketches running in McClure's (spring 
of 1906) ; but still she finds it necessary, when re- 
counting incidents flattering to herself, to hustle 
the narrative abruptly into another form, saying to a 
bystander, "Here, you speak these lines." 

Aside from the conflict with the author's modesty, 
the first person narrative presents mechanical 
difficulties. There is the constant temptation to 
get outside the narrative and see how one is looking 
in a certain situation: "The dog broke loose and 
came running after me. I screamed and ran, fright- 
ened until I was as white as a sheet." 

In the story of adventure, the first person narrative 
may become quite vivid, but it precludes the idea of 
catastrophe and hence, in a measure, weakens the 
suspense. However, several stories have been 
printed whose authors did not seem to be embar- 
rassed in the least by the fact that the first person 
narrator died within the story. And a college 



68 THE SHORT-STORY 

student finished off his first tragic story with the 
astonishing conclusion, "With one heart-rending 
groan I sank to the ground and knew no more.' , 

The same violation of point of view may, of course, 
occur in the third person narrative, but a blunder 
like the following, taken from a newspaper account, 
is indeed a rarity : — 

"The night before he was to sail he was awakened 
by a choking sensation and, grasping what was 
coiled about his neck, tore it away and threw it to 
the other side of the room. The next morning a 
servant went to awaken him and found his dead 
body terribly swollen. He had been bitten on the 
hand by one of the most deadly snakes in India." 
The author of this tale was indeed omniscient. 

The letter form of story must be exceedingly 
clever to be successful. Aldrich's "Marjorie Daw" 
is as good as any story written in this form. The 
letters are concentrated upon a single theme and are 
therefore brief and pointed. When Richardson 
invented the form in order that Clarissa Harlowe 
might pour out her heart, he showed at once its good 
points and its bad. It is admirably adapted for self- 
analysis and confessions of all sorts ; but it is in dan- 
ger of being spun out to too great length. " Clarissa 
Harlowe" is too long, even for a novel in an age 
of leisure, because it is too long for the probabilities. 



MECHANISM 69 

Clarissa must have written some two thousand 
words an hour for eight hours a day, to keep up with 
the events listed in her letters. The modern reader 
has become so very critical that he notes these little 
inconsistencies of narrative. 

The diary is generally more interesting to its 
keeper than to the public ; and the small field of the 
diary story has been pretty well worked over. The 
crying sin of the diary story is its almost inevitable 
sentimentalism. Mary Adams's "The Confessions 
of a Wife," * a serial story, draws out to great length 
the portrayal of the somewhat morbid moods of a 
very moody individual. And the diary story which 
is not a relief map of the emotional realm is likely 
to be flat, diffuse, and dull. 

Since the time of Fielding, the third person nar- 
rative has been the predominant form of fiction. 
The author who tells the story should not, as a rule, 
enter into the narrative in his own person. For the 
brevity of the short-story will permit little comment, 
and unity of impression will be sacrificed if the 
author insists on jumping into the middle of a scene 
or even too apparently managing his stage. Such 
behavior not only distracts the attention to an in- 
dividuality outside the tale, but it frequently destroys 
the illusion of reality. The author may, however, 

1 Century (spring of 1902). 



70 THE SHORT-STORY 

as impersonal narrator, be omniscient and omni- 
present, reading for us the inmost motives of his 
creatures. 

A character within the story may be made to do 
the talking, without any sacrifice of interest. Nar- 
ration within narration, however, is not good story 
art. The character who is to reel off a yarn should 
not be so presented that the introduction is in danger 
of being mistaken for one of two main story lines. 
Kipling's "Soldiers Three" is an example of a suc- 
cessful use of this device. 

III. The Details of Mechanism 

Attention has already been called to the necessity 
of a careful location of the story in point of time. 
Since the short-story is conceived as a series of nicely 
graded scenes or stages leading to a climax, — a 
series which is only artificially isolated from what is 
before and after, — a failure to cope with the plot 
problem of time-location will land the author in 
serious difficulties in the practical working out of the 
plot. It is the merit of the short-story that it can 
achieve a powerful impression of unity if just the 
right cut be made in the line of action. The right 
cut is pretty near the main incident, before and 
after. The main incident may thus be expanded, 



MECHANISM 71 

narrated on full scale as it deserves, and the pre- 
liminary action reaching back into the common- 
places of experience will seem to be diminishing 
in perspective. This artificial proportion acquired 
by foreshortening is one of the main mechanical 
distinctions between short-story proper and mere 
narrative. The beginning and the ending of a stu- 
dent's theme will show the havoc that can be wrought 
in narrative material by a failure to locate the begin- 
ning and the ending of an incident : — 

Aunt Patty 

"Aunt Patty is a typical old maid. Bad luck, as 
many people call it, has followed her all her life. 
Death and financial troubles have deprived her of a 
home, except that provided by her friends and dis- 
tant relatives. We shall go with her as she spends a 
few weeks at one of the homes in which she is made 
welcome. 

"'Oh, papa, Aunt Patty is comin' to-day,' said 
little three- year-old Mary one morning at breakfast." 

Unquestionably this story would have gained 
vigor, as well as something of unity of effect by 
beginning with the child's speech. After a series 
of incidents, in which Aunt Patty proves thoroughly 
obnoxious to the adults, and culminating in a family 



72 THE SHORT-STORY 

quarrel, the conclusion rounds up with the beginning 
in unique circular procedure : — 

"Poor Aunt Patty! She tries to be pleasant, but 
she was spoiled when a little child, and was never 
taught how to be considerate of other people's 
rights and feelings. Her better nature appeals 
very strongly to little children, who are not able to 
understand or appreciate her deficiencies. Her 
kind words and friendly interest had made an impres- 
sion on Mary's mind: hence her delight when she 
heard that Aunt Patty was coming. " 

It takes experience to teach a writer that he may 
boldly cut his goods close and leave the edges raw, 
without ornamental bindings or wrought fringes at 
the ends. 

Another practical question of mechanism concerns 
the indication of the division of the action into scenes 
or stages. Theoretically, this is undesirable, since 
the short-story is able to be conceived as a perfect 
unit, whose scenes are so graded that the imagina- 
tion leaps over the gaps without effort. But, as a 
matter of fact, a number of powerfully dramatic 
stories have been written, where the stages were 
marked by division into parts or chapters, indicated 
by numbers or double lines. Possibly these stories 
succeed in spite of, rather than because of, this 
artificial device for calling attention to the plot con- 



MECHANISM 73 

struction. And it is to be remembered that such 
marked division is desirable only when the imagi- 
nation of the author has crystallized the action into 
stages as capable of isolation as are the scenes of 
a drama. 1 The use of double lines or rows of as- 
terisks to indicate the flight of time is a mere ama- 
teurish makeshift. Time-gaps should be calmly ig- 
nored, if possible, or frankly recognized and bridged 
over as a matter of course. Under no circumstances 
should an author put up a row of barbed- wire fences 
(* * *), shutting off the road ahead. The short- 
story, if properly located, does not often need to 
cover long periods of time. And where it does, the 
indication can be made in a variety of ways so that 
the gaps are neither conspicuous nor monotonous. 
In "The Great Stone Face," Hawthorne meets this 
problem: "The years went on, and Ernest ceased 
to be a boy. . . . More years sped swiftly and 
tranquilly away. . . . The years hurried onward, 
treading in their haste on one another's heels." 

Here the author calmly steps over the yawning 
chasm, and the reader follows easily, and no red 
lanterns are hung out to emphasize the difficulty of 
the feat. 

1 Study the dramatic construction of Kipling's " Baa-Baa 
Black Sheep " and of Virginia Boyle's " Black Silas," Century, 
January, 1900. 



74 THE SHORT-STORY 

The whole problem of transition is important for 
the story. This is a question of style, to be solved 
only through long practice guided by the rhetorical 
principles of variety and ease. Even Goethe lacked 
smoothness of transition : "Wilhelm retired to his 
room and indulged in the following reflections.' ' 
And the beginner's work is often marred by stiff 
introductions of new material such as this, "Later 
she finds these thoughts running through her mind, 
Do I forget my vows?" 

The continuity and unbroken movement of the 
story are of great importance. Movement is inter- 
rupted and reversed because the writer has never 
straightened out his material into its location in point 
of time. Before pen is put to paper, the whole 
movement should be mentally arranged. Then 
there will be no necessity for such overlapping 
narrative as the following : — 

" Saturday morning dawned bright and clear. 
The three boys had arisen early and, after a short 
consultation, had decided to ask Frank to join them 
in their sports again. But soon after they set out 
for his house, they saw him leave and strike out 
for the woods that bordered on the lake. 

"' Wonder what he's up to!' muttered Ned. 
'Can't be goin' fishin'; for he hasn't any pole. 
Wonder what he's got in that basket.' 



MECHANISM 75 

"'Oh, come on; we can get along without him. 
I say, fellows, let's make the wigwam first. Then 
we can go on the war-path, and I'll bet we'll trail 
him.' 

"Ina few hours the boys had constructed a wig- 
wam woven of pau-pau leaves and branches. 

"But what of Frank? As he walked home alone 
Friday evening, he busily devised plans for triumph- 
ing over the other boys." 

The continuity of a story may be broken by the 
intrusion of extraneous matter requiring a backward 
step to resume connections : — 

"The idiot had probably slept in concealment until 
one o'clock and then had crept round and round the 
room, seeking, in his blind, animal way, some means 
of escape. He had always been harmless; and the 
terrible neglected condition of the poor creature brought 
about a reform in the Nelson County poorhouse. 

11 And what of the poor girl who had been a victim 
to this awful night of horror V 

The various devices for heightening suspense 
and preparing for the climax are, like the methods 
of transition, partly questions of style. Yet they 
have also structural significance. A love story, for 
example, falls down flat if the sentiment is in no 
way prepared for. 

"Next evening, when Mary Collins was down 



76 THE SHORT-STORY 

street, she saw John Mclntyre drive into town. 
'Did you bring me those apples, Mr. Mclntyre?' 
she asked. ' Oh, aren't they beauties ! How I'd 
like to see the orchard where they grew ! ' 

"'It isn't far out there, Miss Collins, and I'd be 
glad to give you a ride, as I'm going home at 
once !' 

"And so it was that John Mclntyre fell in love 
with sweet Mary Collins." 

In John Luther Long's "The Siren," 1 a story 
worth study for its artificial but clever mechanism, 
the movement is like that of a dream, where the 
unexpected is the natural and the convincing. But 
the tragic outcome is nevertheless prepared for by the 
recurrence of the refrain, the "too late" of the Siren's 
eyes. 

Preparation for denouement does not mean warning 
signals. It is irritating to be nudged with a premo- 
nition by an unskilful writer. 

"Our readers will discover by and by why we are 
so particular in referring to this latter piece of fur- 
niture." 

"All this sounded very charming, but oh, if we 
could only have had a glimpse into the few eventful 
days we were to spend there, how much trouble and 
misery we might have avoided ! " 
1 Century, July, 1903. 



MECHANISM 77 

Such signals are not to be compared with Haw- 
thorne's delicate preparation in "The Ambitious 
Guest" or with the tragic hint in "The Birthmark," 
where Aylmer dreams and mutters, "It is in her 
heart now; we must have it out." 

Suspense is, of course, desirable in the short-story, 
as in all fiction; but it cannot be accumulated, and 
it is not in any sense necessary to the success of 
story plots. Maupassant's "A Piece of String" 
and, in fact, most of the realistic stories of our day 
proceed almost entirely without suspense. It is to 
be remembered, too, that, even though the end may 
be known in advance, the highest kind of suspense 
may be maintained by a gradual revelation of the 
way toward that end. And preparation for denoue- 
ment, if skilful, is likely to heighten "rather than 
lower the suspense. Moreover, it is by these subtle 
touches of preparation that the conclusion of a story 
is made to seem to the reader the one inevitable con- 
clusion. 

IV. The Ending 

The ending of a story includes climax and conclu- 
sion. The climax is the main point of the story, at 
which the lines of interest rise to their greatest height 
of emotional power and converge. "The conclu- 
sion is the solving of all problems, the termination 



78 THE SHORT-STORY 

of the narrative itself, and the artistic severing of 
all relations between narrator and reader." * The 
conclusion is of considerable importance for the 
structure of the drama and the novel : in the former, 
for toning down the emotional strain as well as 
making clear the plot; in the latter, for clearing up 
complexities of plot and making some necessary- 
disposals of the minor characters. But the short- 
story, having simple plot construction, should not 
stand in need of explanatory after-statements. The 
normal story-plot has climax and conclusion so close 
as to be almost if not quite identical. In the story 
of ingenious plot, however, the story may need to be 
continued after the height of suspense has been passed 
over. Thus, in Poe's "The Gold-Bug," after the 
exciting climax is passed, there follows immediately 
a sort of natural rest and relaxation. But the in- 
terest of the reader is not lost : it simply gives way 
to a more intellectual interest in the careful working 
out of the mysterious cipher which constitutes the in- 
genuity and hence the whole point of the plot. The 
first climax, the finding of the treasure, is, without 
question, the more stirring; but the suspense is by 
it relaxed and not released until the final resolution 
of the mystery. 
Poe's customary practice was a lightning-like 

1 Barrett, "Short-Story Writing," p. 171, 



MECHANISM 79 

conclusion. "The Pit and the Pendulum" is very 
long- drawn- out ; but in sharp contrast with the ex- 
pansive body of the narrative comes this brief con- 
clusion : — 

"I struggled no more, but the agony of my soul 
found vent in one long, loud, and final scream of 
despair. I felt that I tottered upon the brink — I 
averted my eyes — 

"There was a discordant hum of human voices! 
There was a loud blast as of many trumpets ! There 
was a harsh grating as of a thousand thunders ! The 
fiery walls rushed back ! An outstretched hand 
caught my own as I fell fainting into the abyss. It 
was that of General Lassalle. The French army 
had entered Toledo. The Inquisition was in the 
hands of its enemies." 

No one has been more successful than Poe in 
writing stories that must be remembered — indelible 
impressions on the imagination. This is due in part 
to the rapidity and intensity of his conclusions. 
Though he delights in stories of mood or conscience, 
it is significant that he nearly always makes them 
end in action. His practice may be illustrated fairly 
by "The Black Cat," where in four short sentences 
the climax is reached, the last of which gives, in a 
tone of concentrated horror, the essential fact of the 
plot : — 



80 THE SHORT-STORY 

" Of my own thoughts it is folly to speak. Swoon- 
ing, I staggered to the opposite wall. For one in- 
stant the party upon the stairs remained motionless, 
through extremity of terror and of awe. In the next 
a dozen stout arms were toiling at the wall. It fell 
bodily. The corpse, already greatly decayed and 
clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the- 
spectators. Upon its head, with red extended mouth 
and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose 
craft had seduced me into murder, and whose in- 
forming voice had consigned me to the hangman. 
/ had walled the monster up within the tombV 

Simplicity, as well as brevity, contributes to the 
intensity of the conclusion. It is the simplicity of 
the ending of Maupassant's " Une Vendetta " that 
makes it doubly terrible. And, again, the power of 
the simple ending may be seen in such stories as 
Coppee's "The Substitute" and "The Captain's 
Vices." 

The short-story conclusion should not be descrip- 
tive, nor should it be expository, whether for pur- 
poses of psychological analysis, moralizing, or clear- 
ing away plot problems. Rather, it should be made 
of typical narrative material, preferably a decision or 
an act narrated by the author or suggested by the 
speech of the characters. 

It is a debatable question whether the ending must 



MECHANISM 81 

really conclude. Some plots have for their whole 
point the posing of a problem. It may be a minor 
problem provoking curiosity only (Stockton's "The 
Lady or the Tiger?" Century, 25:83, does little 
more than this); or it may be a problem of con- 
duct, involving ethical standards (Hamlin Garland's 
"A Branch Road"). It would seem that, if a prob- 
lem is worth solving at all, it would be allowable to 
pose it and leave it with the reader. But this practice 
is not synonymous with the false climax and abrupt 
ending used by amateurs who are endeavoring to 
secure the brevity and suggestiveness now so much 
desired. A student left his boy heroes stuck- on a 
sand-bar, and gave not the slightest clew to their 
subsequent fate. Another left the pitcher chasing 
a rowdy round and round the ball field for a fight. 
Such conclusions are uncomfortably suggestive of 
characters petrified in action. The story should 
conclude unless there is special reason why it must 
not. But it should not be carried far past the climax 
and smoothed down into dulness and convention- 
ality. " And so they were married and lived happily 
ever after" has gone out of date; but the practice 
still survives in endings such as these : — 

" Indeed, the whole family were delighted to have 
Robert in their home, and he never forgot the debt 
of gratitude he owed to them." 



82 THE SHORT-STORY 

" John Guthrie never regretted the stand he took; 
for the negro boy did not disappoint his expecta- 
tions." 

When the main incident has been given, the story 
should be terminated with all due speed, that the last 
impression may be interesting and strong. 

It has often been stated that editors glance first at 
the beginning and then at the ending, before read- 
ing through a story manuscript. If so, they are 
doubtless saved many weary hours of reading 
stories which are crude and pointless. Faults of 
style are likely to appear at their worst in the. in- 
troductory paragraph, and lack of point and plot 
comes out inevitably in the conclusion. One would 
need only the closing paragraph of this theme to 
convince him that absolutely nothing has happened 
in it, and that the story was concluded before it had 
properly begun : — 

"They had barely gotten under shelter when the 
storm burst forth. 'What a shame that our trip 
should be spoiled in this way ! ' said the boys. ' Yes, 
it is too bad,' remarked the girls, 'but we'll go again 
to-morrow.' 'Yes, that's what, we will,' replied 
the boys, 'and we'll prepare for the rain, too.'" 

Another pointless story closes with the discovery 
that her mother knew his. They chatted like old 
friends, the writer says. 



MECHANISM 83 

"As Mary rose to go, she said 'Good-by,' and 
added : ' You must certainly come to see us. Mother 
will be so glad to meet you.'" 

The conventional ending should be avoided like a 
plague. And an ending should be sought for which 
will unmistakably indicate that progress has been 
made. 



CHAPTER VI 

UNITY OF IMPRESSION 

It has been said that the short-story requires 
absolute unity of plot. But with unity of plot and 
a good central idea a writer may still fall short of 
the highest unity — the unity of impression, which 
depends upon the story's tone. Unity of conception 
is a prerequisite to the impressionistic effect, but 
unity of execution must be added to it. This calls 
for every resource of style. 

A careful comparison of the best works of such 
writers as Poe, Hawthorne, Maupassant, Coppee, 
Daudet, and Kipling with the average readable 
story printed in the magazines to-day, will show that 
it is the lack of a definite and unified emotional 
coloring (resulting in a harmony of atmosphere) 
that brands the latter as hopelessly second class. 
This delicate harmony of tone is very difficult to 
acquire, but it is well worth striving after; for it is' 
a mark of fine art and indicates masterly concep- 
tion. 

It is true that many stories do start out in one 
8 4 



UNITY OF IMPRESSION 85 

mood or tone and end in another. But the story 
which is a rounded, polished unit has its tone and 
temper the same throughout. If the story begins 
well, it ends well, and if it begins badly, it ends 
badly — that is, unless the author has deliberately 
undertaken the effect of contrast, as in "The Am- 
bitious Guest," where the cheerful picture of home 
life serves as dramatic contrast for the impending 
tragedy. As a rule, the comic or even cheerful 
beginning is bad art for a tragedy. 

The first essential for unity of impression is single- 
ness of purpose, resulting in simplicity of plot. The 
end must not only be foreseen from the begin- 
ning: it must dominate the whole progress of the 
story. 

"The denouement of a long story is nothing, it is 
just a full close, which you may approach and 
accompany as you please — it is a coda, not an es- 
sential member of the rhythm; but the body and 
end of a short-story is bone of the bone and blood 
of the blood of the beginning." * 

Poe, too, testifies to the necessity of strict unity 
of impression : — 

"A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale. 
If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accom- 
modate his incidents; but having conceived, with 

1 Stevenson, " Vailima Letters," 1 : 147. 



86 THE SHORT-STORY 

deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be 
wrought out, he then invents such incidents, he then 
combines such events as may best aid him in establish- 
ing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sen- 
tence tend not to the out-bringing of this effect, then 
he has failed in his first step. In the whole com- 
position there should be no word written of which 
the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one 
preestablished design." 

And he observes the law, par excellence, in his 
"Fall of the House of Usher." The keynote of the 
story, so far as mood is concerned, is sounded in the 
introductory paragraph and again in the last para- 
graph, in a very similar way, so that the mood of the 
story is the reader's first and his last impression. 
There is in this story also such a choice of setting as 
can come only from a vivid conception of the story 
motive. The landscape is absolutely harmonious 
with the idea and is indeed the instrument for con- 
veying the emotional atmosphere. 

Perhaps one of the main reasons why amateurs 
fail to secure such unity is, that they are unwilling 
to give up certain points which pride of creation 
persuades them are not thoroughly irrelevant, but 
which really occurred to them accidentally and are 
aside from the purpose of the story. Details which 
are not quite relevant not only contribute nothing — 



UNITY OF IMPRESSION 87 

they positively detract from the impression of the 
story. 

A more positive problem is, what to include. The 
selection of details which shall seem to be informed 
with one idea is the practical working out of the 
impressionistic motive. 

A striking impressionistic device or two may be 
found in Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death." 
In the black chamber where the firelight streamed 
upon dark hangings, through blood-tinted panes, 
stood a gigantic clock of ebony, whose pendulum 
"swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous 
clang ; and when the minute-hand made the circuit of 
the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came 
from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which 
was clear, and loud, and deep, and exceedingly 
musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, 
at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the or- 
chestra were constrained to pause momentarily in 
their performance to hearken to the sound ; and thus 
the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions, and 
there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company, 
and while the chimes of the clock yet rang it was 
observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more 
aged and sedate passed their hands over their 
brows as if in confused revery and meditation; but 
when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at 



88 THE SHORT-STORY 

once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked 
at each other and smiled as if at their own nervous- 
ness and folly, and made whispering vows each to 
the other that the next chiming of the clock should 
produce in them no similar emotion, and then, after 
the lapse of sixty minutes, . . . there came yet 
another disconcert and tremulousness and medita- 
tion as before." The device is not dropped after 
this elaborate presentation. The Red Death made 
his way to the shadow of the ebony clock, where 
the tragedy reaches its culmination. And "the life 
of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of 
the gay." 

The leading device may be delicately exaggerated, 
as in Hawthorne's " Rappaccini's Daughter," which 
is permeated by the rich, heavy perfume of the poison- 
ous breath of Beatrice. Similarly, the gorgeous but 
forbidding purple flower suggests the complex at- 
mosphere of sensuous beauty at once heightened and 
marred by the taint of the unnatural and unwhole- 
some. By the symbolic relationship between Beatrice 
and the sister flower, the two devices are made one. 

No one has surpassed Hawthorne in the art of 
casting a spell over the imagination by the skilful 
handling of a physical suggestion. In "The Birth- 
mark," the emotional intensity varies delicately with 
the distinctness of the fairy hand. 



UNITY OF IMPRESSION 89 

That the impressionistic effect was deliberately 
preconceived with Hawthorne as with Poe, may be 
inferred from almost all of his elaborate notes of 
motives for short-stories, of which the following is an 
extreme example : — 

"The scene of a story sketch to be laid within the 
light of a street-lantern ; the time, when the lamp is 
near going out, and the catastrophe to be simul- 
taneous with the last flickering gleam." 1 
The use of such a time scheme would certainly se- 
cure strict unity of action, and would also contribute 
largely to unity of impression. 

In the following note, Hawthorne has harmonized 
every detail of an imaginary story with his main 
character, impressionistically conceived through a 
few striking traits : — 

"The story of a man, cold and hard-hearted, and 
acknowledging no brotherhood with mankind. At 
his death they might try to dig him a grave, but at a 
little space beneath the ground, strike upon a rock, 
as if the earth refused to receive the unnatural son 
into her bosom. Then they would put him into an 
old sepulchre, where the coffins and corpses were 
all turned to dust, and so he would be alone. Then 
the body would petrify; and he, having died in 
some characteristic act or expression, would seem, 

1 "American Note-Book," 1 : 16. 



9 o THE SHORT-STORY 

through endless ages of death, to repel society as in 
life, and no one would be buried in that tomb for- 
ever.' ' 1 

Now, while the analysis of literary effects into 
mechanical devices is always arbitrary and, in a 
sense, profitless (inasmuch as the imitation of a par- 
ticular device would by no means insure the procur- 
ing of the same effect), yet the student can, by a study 
of the great stories, come to appreciate the harmony 
of atmosphere and tone which have made the short- 
story, in the hands of the masters, second only to 
the poem in its capability of perfection of form as 
corresponding to the mood and thought. And he 
will inevitably come to the conclusion that, whatever 
formal laws of construction may be violated, he must 
never let the tone of his story lapse from that of a 
sustained and solitary emotional mood. 

x " American Note-Book," i ; 12. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE TITLE 

The title has for its main function the advertising 
of the story to the reading public. Like other ad- 
vertisements, it may or may not announce the genuine 
essence of the article. Its first business is to attract 
the reader's attention by the promise of an interest- 
ing story. As there are all kinds of good stories, so 
there are all kinds of good titles ; and it is very diffi- 
cult to say, without considering at least the type of 
story, what constitutes a good, and what a bad 
title. But the essential elements of a good title are 
gathered into a single sentence by Barrett, when he 
says, "A good title is apt, specific, attractive, new, 
and short." * 

As magazines and stories multiply, the need of 
advertisement correspondingly increases. One who 
made a business of it could not read all the inter- 
esting stories now produced ; he must select. Some 
will judge by the illustrations, and some by the fre- 
quency of passages of dialogue; but the intelligent 

1 "Short-Story Writing," p. 67. 
9i 



92 THE SHORT-STORY 

chooser will generally pay some slight attention to 
the title of a story. 

Perhaps the title is very fanciful, such as: The 
Girl Who Was ; The Garden Behind the Moon ; The 
Fox's Understudy; The Monkey that Never Was. 
If so, it merely suggests a story of fantasy, with not 
so much as a hint as to the kind. But if the title 
is not altogether fanciful, it should have connection 
with the story at some point. It need not be a genu- 
ine text like the title of an expository theme, but it 
should hint at the most essential feature of the story. 
In forming the title, not the whole plot, but the mo- 
tive should be taken into consideration. 

The title may be deduced from the main idea or 
theme of the story (Expiation, A Branch Road, The 
Revolt of "Mother," A Note of Scarlet, The Substi- 
tute, The Test) ; from the main character (A Cow- 
ard, A Solitary, Black Silas, Colonel Starbottle for 
the Plaintiff, A Church Mouse, A Kitchen Colonel) ; 
from the main incident (A Young Man in a Hurry) ; 
from the main object (The Gold- Bug, The Purloined 
Letter, The Necklace, A Piece -of String). Or, it 
may indicate the setting (A Mercury of the Foot- 
hills, Up the Coulee, Outcasts of Poker Flat). The 
specific fitness of a title to the particular phase of 
plot should be able to be recognized after the story 
has been read. The aptness a title may possess is 



THE TITLE 93 

to be observed in the titles of many French writers, 
which are ''little miracles of clever symbolism." 

Because of the difference in people's tastes, it is 
hard to say just why a title pleases or displeases, why 
it interests or fails to interest. It is probably be- 
cause of what it does or does not suggest — because 
of its associations. For a title is a hint, rather than 
a subject. Some titles are failures in themselves, 
either in conception or in form; but most poor 
titles are so because of a deficiency or a falseness of 
suggestion. The fact that a title is defective does 
not prove that a short-story is unworthy; it merely 
suggests that to the casual reader. And there are 
some defects of title which may be traced back di- 
rectly to errors in the construction of the story. So 
that, inasmuch as the majority of amateur work is 
marred by weak, false, or ineffective titles, it is 
worth while to consider the most common faults in 
title-making, even though we should arrive at only 
negative conclusions. It is worth while even to be 
able to recognize the deficiency of such titles as these 
drawn from beginners' work in story- writing. 

First, there is the title which is patterned after 
the news caption. Perhaps because a news item 
furnished the source of plot these titles were used for 
short-stories by college sophomores: — 

Killed Girl Who Would Not Elope. 



94 THE SHORT-STORY 

Rescued from Flames. 

A Victim of Ohio Weather. 

Intelligent Pet Saves Life of Girl Mistress. 

The news caption is not improved by the additional 
flavor of an adjective claiming for the story a quality 
which should be left to the reader's judgment, as 
in — 

An Exciting Experience. 
A Miraculous Escape. 

To be avoided also is the title of general form which 
either roughly indicates the type of story, as in the 
following : — 

A Coincidence. 

A Surprise. 

A Story of Adventure. 

A Bear Story. 

or, like these, indicates the fact that the story is, 
after all, mere narrative : — 

A Fishing Trip. 

An Experience in the Rocky Mountains. 

A Ramble for Specimens. 

A Trip Abroad (two pages). 

Our Summer at Podunc (two pages). 

What Happened in a Day. 

These titles suggest nothing more than an unas- 



THE TITLE 95 

sorted and probably uninteresting list of events. 
They are faulty because of a radical deficiency 
of story-plot. 

Worse than the mere narrative title is the descrip- 
tive title, such as A Snowstorm and A Visit to the 
Natural Bridge. And still more unacceptable are 
abstract titles appropriate for expository essays: — 

Brains. 

Heroism. 

A Girl's Courage. 

Youthful Valor. 

Getting Even. 

The Effect of Cigarettes. 

Beginners often think that they must pack the 
whole contents of the story into a summarizing title : — 

How Aunt Miranda Missed Her Train. 
Why Mr. Brown Did Not Go to Church. 
How a Feast Ended. 
A Horrible Night Spent with a Robber. 

Such an effort at summarizing results often in titles 
which are so long as to be unwieldy : — 

The Introduction of Robert Dean to Ridge School 
District. 

Katherine Ackermann's Vacation in the Rocky 
Mountains. 

A Struggle for Life in the Currents of a Waterfall. 



96 THE SHORT-STORY 

And the effort at total revelation sometimes brings 
it about that an ingenious plot whose whole point 
lies in the reversal or surprise at the end is given 
away at the start. The interest of the reader is 
likely to be forfeited on reading titles which disclose 
denouement : — 

The Mischief of a Limb (a ghost story). 
Only a Lightning Rod (a ghost story). 
Only a Cannon Cracker. 
An Attempted Highway Robbery. 
A Scare. 

The essential error here is an effort at too close con- 
nection with the plot. 

At the opposite extreme is the loose title with and 
or or. The Thief and the Song, and Bert and His 
Gambling Den are not objectionable in themselves, 
but they do look as if the writer had not been able 
to decide which element of the story should be em- 
phasized. The double title connected by a con- 
junction which throws upon the reader the burden 
of selection is a frank confession of the author's 
inability. A popular " ten- cent library" offers the 
following variety of titles : — 

At Any Cost, and a Modern Cinderella. 

Two Fair Women; or, Which Loved Him Best? 

Lady Castlemaine's Divorce; or, Put Asunder. 



THE TITLE 97 

Hilda's Lover; or, The False Vow; or, Lady 
Hutton's Ward. 

Diana's Discipline; or, Sunshine and Roses. 
Her Mother's Sin; or, A Bright Wedding Day. 

A consideration of the last two pairs will show that 
the author was doubtful about the tone, as well as 
the motive of the story ; for the members of the pairs 
are decidedly incongruous in their suggestion. 

The title which is weak in itself is a mere dull 
commonplace, sounding quiet and unprogressive : — 

A City Home. 
The Summer Club. 
The Wedding Trip. 
A Youthful Friendship. 

Or the idea back of it has been used so often that 
the title itself is trite : — 

A Will and a Way. 

The Turning of the Tables. 

For Better or Worse. 

The Lost Jewels. 

A Blessing in Disguise. 

A Haunted House. 

Triteness is not disguised by putting it into the form 
of a statement or thesis to be proved : — 

No Such Word as Fail. 

H 



98 THE SHORT-STORY 

Love is Not the Only Blind Passion. 
The Biter is Sometimes Bitten. 
Love Will Have its Own Way. 

A title may be faulty in its diction. The ugliest 
faults are extreme alliteration and harsh combinations 
of sound : — 

A Student Solicitor's Sin. 
The Deepening of Desolation. 
Elizabeth's Elopement. 

These are instances of mild alliteration, as compared 
with a title of the Reformation Era, printed in the 
New York Times, — Seven Sobs of a Sorrowful Soul 
in Sin; or, the Seven Penitential Psalms of the 
Princely Prophet David. But it is to be remembered 
that modern taste indicates that, in prose, allitera- 
tion must be carefully disguised if it is allowed to 
appear at all. 

There can be no doubt as to the undesirability of 
such uneuphonious combinations as the following: — 

A Fortunate Misfortune. 
A Spectacular Wreck. 
The Haste of Jack Hastings. 
The Cat's Stratagem. 

Because of its brevity, because of its advertising 
mission, and because it is what we unsuccessfully 



THE TITLE 99 

endeavor to recall a story by, the title should be not 
only chosen with care, but exquisitely worded. Even 
the subtlest incongruities should be avoided. Bos- 
sie's Adventure, John Smith's Last Prowl, and 
Reginald McDodd's Coon Hunt have a suggestion 
of the paradoxical. "Bossie" is almost too mild 
for adventure of any sort; " John Smith" too plac- 
idly conventional for prowling; and " Reginald 
McDodd" a trifle too aristocratic for the coon hunt. 
It may be said, in passing, that the title which in- 
cludes a name demands especial care, lest the in- 
terest in the name-character be sacrificed at the 
start. Few readers would be interested in What 
Jimmie Did, Tom's Story, or Jamie's Ambition. 

Very frequently the title adequately suggests the 
story tone. For example, none but the sentimental 
reader would be likely to take up stories appearing 
under titles such as these : — 

Won and Lost — Happiness. 
Love that was Lost. 
After Clouds, Sunshine. 

And only the seeker after sensationalism would fol- 
low the lure of Trapped and Duped by a Convict, 
with their suggestiveness of the chapter headings in 
the "Wild West" stories. 

That a consideration of the function of the story 

LOFG. 



ioo THE SHORT-STORY 

title is of practical benefit to the amateur may be 
seen by comparing the titles appended here with those 
used for illustration within the chapter. The taste 
of a writer cannot be purified once for all in a week 
or a month. Nor can the unimaginative writer be 
immediately taught invention. But classes quickly 
take up the essentials of the story title and, after the 
subject has been discussed, form titles which are 
considerably more interesting and attractive, as well 
as suggestive of a story with a point : — 

The Passing of Nobody's Darling. 

In the Name of the Messiah. 

The Cremation in 77th Street. 

The Passenger in Lower Two. 

Martha Wright, Bewitched. 

The Man with the Blue Goggles. 

The Corner of Destiny. 

The " Tallow-pot" of No. 56. 

The Girl with the Evil Eye. 

The Slide at the Liberty Bell. 

The Defender. 

Madam. 

The Whistling Corpse. 

A Matrimonial Deal. 

The Spider's Diamonds. 

His Supreme Decision. 

The Voice that Conquered. 



THE TITLE 101 

Polly's Destruction of Eden. 
The Crucifixion of Ruth Ellen. 
Shorty's Private Car. 1 

1 The titles listed here are from stories written by a small class 
very soon after the subject of titles was discussed. 



CHAPTER VIII 

CHARACTERIZATION 

I. The Materials 

In gathering materials for character portrayal in 
the short-story there is a special need of observation. 
The trained story-writer is on the alert for every 
manifestation of that which is not necessarily odd or 
eccentric or abnormal in human character, but still 
fresh, striking, or of such importance as to have ac- 
quired perennial interest to the human race. Traits 
and whims, actions and motives, mental crises, must 
be observed in so far as they have external mani- 
festations; and, where these fail, the author's sym- 
pathetic intuition must read in what is lacking. And 
the office of interpretation must not be underesti- 
mated; for without the intuitive grasp of character 
which comes from a habit of thoughtful introspec- 
tion and careful comparison of the external manifes- 
tations of character with some inner standard, the 
author is likely to fail in unifying his materials and 
in instilling the breath of life. A character com- 
pounded from observed details which the author 



CHARACTERIZATION 103 

has never, even to himself, interpreted, would be at 
best a piece of soulless mechanism — no true crea- 
tion. A good character, like a good story, has a 
point. This point is given by interpretation. 

As has been hinted above, the introspective turn of 
mind is helpful in interpretation. If one habitually 
weighs his own motives, he is likely to be more ca- 
pable of judging others fairly. An author should 
thoroughly understand himself, if he understand no 
other man. For he can then furnish his own model. 
Through his own experiences he learns to under- 
stand those of others. Whether his characters are 
good or bad, every author puts a good deal of him- 
self into them all. Characters of widely differing 
types may be drawn from the same model. Accord- 
ing to the author's own statement, George Eliot's 
Casaubon in " Middlemarch " and Grandcourt in 
"Daniel Deronda" were drawn from herself. A 
few traits and the formula for combination are 
already furnished every author in himself. For the 
rest of his matter, he may trust to observation, if he 
is careful to rework the gathered facts. 

Real persons are difficult to copy as a whole. It 
has been done occasionally with success (notable 
success in the cases of David Harum and Mrs. 
Wiggs). But the author must be careful, in sketch- 
ing from real life, to conceal identity by making 



io 4 THE SHORT-STORY 

slight changes which do not affect the mainsprings 
of the character — changes in appearance, circum- 
stances, etc. The real character is best used, how- 
ever, only as a source of fresh and varied informa- 
tion as to the make-up of the human mind, and as a 
guide to probability in the total work of character 
creation. 

II. The Scope 

The special work of the short-story in character 
realization is concisely stated in James W. Linn's 
definition of the short-story as "the presentation, in 
a brief, dramatic form, of a turning-point in the life 
of a single character." The short-story has more in 
common with the drama than with the novel here. 
For, as Mr. Linn goes on to say, "The novel aims 
to show growth of character, with reaction of one 
character upon another. It portrays a certain pe- 
riod or the whole of life — but with the aim of por- 
traying growth. The short-story has to do with 
change in character — the cross-road, rather than 
the main road travelled." '* Because of its limitations 
of space, the short-story is compelled to use dramatic 
methods, showing the main character in the glare of 
the footlights for a brief space of time. Also, for 

1 Lectures on the Short-Story, University of Chicago. 



CHARACTERIZATION 105 

the same reason, it must dispense with much of the 
setting of minor characters used to such good ad- 
vantage by the novelist. It must present characters 
artificially isolated in all respects, — from family, from 
relatives, from past history, and from the distant 
future. The story gives but a brief glimpse of the 
life of a character, and is almost never biographical. 
Past and future history may be hinted at, but they 
must never be skimmed in bald summary or told 
outright. The necessary information will be given 
by the skilful author incidentally, and apparently 
without design, and often it will be implied by the 
dialogue. 

There is nothing unconvincing in this method of 
acquainting the reader with the characters. On the 
other hand, it is extremely natural. We rarely meet 
people in real life who tell us all about themselves 
within the first half hour ; and, if we do, we politely 
avoid further acquaintance with them. The first 
rule for successful presentation is, that the reader's 
conception of the characters shall grow. This is 
as true of the stationary character as of the develop- 
ing one. The revelation, at least, should be increas- 
ingly effective to the climax. 

Broadly speaking, there are two main kinds of 
characters : those which change, and those which do 
not change. The short-story, like the novel, may 



106 THE SHORT-STORY 

sketch stationary characters; but, in doing so, it is 
at a special disadvantage. In the novel, with its 
array of minor incident, its fulness of description and 
analysis, its wealth of comment, we are drawn so in- 
timately into the life of the main character that we 
appreciate small points in characterization. We do 
not demand an unusual character or even an unusual 
situation. We loiter contentedly in the realm of the 
commonplace. In the short-story, on the other 
hand, if we are denied the spice of character develop- 
ment, we demand something unique in the character 
which appears so briefly on the stage before us. A 
common man may interest us; but, to do so, he 
must be presented in a situation which in itself suffices 
to make his commonplaceness a thing worth noting. 
In the short-story which merely reveals a character 
that does not change, there must be something 
unique either in the character or in the situation. 

The developing character is naturally more inter- 
esting in the story, as it is in real life. And the best 
short-story is that which presents not development 
in full length or in summary, but a stage or cross- 
section of development — the character at a crisis, 
about to be determined in one direction or the other. 
Many writers on the art of the short-story fondly 
insist that the change in character cannot be accom- 
plished within the legitimate compass of the short- 



CHARACTERIZATION 107 

story. It cannot be accomplished after the fashion 
of the novel ; but development can be achieved by a 
modification of the methods of the drama (as in Kip- 
ling's " Baa-Baa Black Sheep," to take an extreme 
example). The problems of character development 
in the short-story are very similar to those met in 
drama. There is the same necessity for the elimina- 
tion of minor incident, and for the selection of a 
few significant passages in the action, one of which 
shall be the climax, and all of which shall bring the 
main character into such prominence of speech and 
action as shall render him transparent to the gaze of 
the beholder. To effect this, plot must be made 
subservient to the work of characterization. The 
situation must be nicely adapted to display the 
author's conception of his hero. 

Like the drama, the short-story seems to be arti- 
ficial in its condensation and foreshortening of the 
lives of characters. Howells says: 1 " People always 
knew that character is not changed by a dream in 
a series of tableaux; that a ghost cannot do much 
towards reforming an inordinately selfish person; 
that a life cannot be turned white, like a head of hair, 
in a single night, by the most allegorical apparition ; 
that want and sin and shame cannot be cured by 
kettles singing on the hob." But, by eliminating the 

1 " Criticism and Fiction," p. 179. 



108 THE SHORT-STORY 

common and the minor incidents, great and sig- 
nificant ones are made more prominent. By the 
great incidents is meant not necessarily those which 
are in themselves tremendous, but those which are 
significant for the particular character in question. 
In some cases these are very trivial in themselves, 
but tremendous in their consequences. 

A main situation is the first necessity for the sepia- 
ration of the action of a story so as to present stages 
in the development of the character. With relation 
to that, the minor situations or incidents must be 
chosen. Infinite skill would seem to be demanded 
to connect these artificially isolated stages of char- 
acter development into continuous narrative. But 
this is just where the unimaginative writer misses it. 
He buries his main situations under a muddy 
stream of narrative. This is one mark of the ama- 
teur ; and it is this that marks the greatest difference 
between narration and short-story proper. 

The situations, if chosen carefully, will imply most 
of the connection. They should, however, be nicely 
graded, 1 so as to make possible to the imagination 
what we call coherence or consistency in character 
development. 

1 See chapter on Short-Story, Baldwin's " College Manual of 
Rhetoric." 



CHARACTERIZATION 109 

III. Methods 0} Presenting Character 

1. Description 

Many a beginner in story- writing is contented with 
a name and a trait or two to fill the position of a 
character. A growing conception of the needs of fill- 
ing this empty form with the semblance of substan- 
tial life is likely to lead him to the opposite extreme 
of too great fulness of portrayal. It is necessary 
that the author have in his own mind a full con- 
ception of the appearance of his characters, a 
vivid mental picture of them. But it is not neces- 
sary — indeed, it is often undesirable — that he 
should put this down on paper. When we are read- 
ing the life-story of a man, we want his appearance 
given us in full. But when we find a man of interest 
only in a special situation, a full catalogue of per- 
sonal details is not so necessary. The most imagi- 
native writers give a hint or two and leave the reader's 
imagination to complete the picture. In "The Man 
Who Would be King," observe how few details of 
appearance Kipling gives us ; yet how quickly we 
are led to form our pictures of the characters. We 
can even form a vivid picture from a clever listing 
of temperamental traits, as in this little sketch of 
Stevenson's : ! — 

1 " Weir of Hermiston," p. 7. 



no THE SHORT-STORY 

"She bore the name of the Rutherfords, but she 
was the daughter of their trembling wives. At the 
first she was not wholly without charm. Neighbors 
recalled in her, as a child, a strain of elfin wilfulness, 
gentle little mutinies, sad little gayeties, even a morn- 
ing gleam of beauty that was not to be fulfilled. She 
withered in the growing and . . . came to her 
maturity depressed, and, as it were, defaced; np 
blood of life in her, no grasp or gayety; pious, anx- 
ious, tender, tearful, and incompetent.' ' 

The growing appreciation of the power of imagi- 
native appeal by the selection of salient details and 
the careful search for an effective diction have com- 
bined to bring about a new form of art in character 
description. Instead of the set and completed de- 
scription of personages as to external characteristics, 
we have their appearance presented in changing 
lights, so that our conception of the look and manner 
of a character grows on us gradually, instead of being 
definitely and consciously moulded at the start. Thus 
it never becomes absolutely fixed, but remains suffi- 
ciently variable to permit the illusion of life. 

The exhaustive listing of details of personal 
appearance argues a lack of imagination in the 
author, and generally fails to rouse the imagination 
of the reader to activity. A study of the following 
catalogue description (from "A Chelsea House- 



CHARACTERIZATION in 

holder") will show how a face should not be de- 
scribed : — 

" To begin, then, Muriel was tall, with a slight, 
erect figure, a quick step, and an air of youth and 
vigor which did the beholder good to look at. Her 
face was oval, as nearly oval, at least, as a face can 
be in which the chin is a good deal more pronounced 
than is usual in classic beauties. The cheeks were 
pale, paler than they had any business to be, judging 
by the rest of her physique, the most noticeable fact 
in point of coloring being that the eyes, hair, brows, 
and lashes were all of the same, or pretty nearly the 
same, color — a deep, dark brown, inclining to chest- 
nut above the temples, from which the hair was 
brushed courageously back, so as to form a small 
knot at the back of the head. Her eyes — not, per- 
haps, by the way, a strikingly original trait in a 
heroine — were large and bright; indeed, brighter 
or pleasanter eyes have seldom looked out of a wom- 
an's face, their beauty consisting less in their size 
and color than in this very vividness and brightness, 
which seemed to shine out of the irises themselves. 
For all that, the face in repose was not exactly a 
bright one, or rather, the brightness came to it only 
by fits and starts, its prevailing expression being a 
somewhat sober one, a sobriety giving way, however, 
at a touch, and being replaced by a peculiarly sun- 
shiny smile and glance." 



ii2 THE SHORT-STORY 

The details listed here are so numerous, their quali- 
fications so many and so unimportant, that to ask 
the reader to put them together into a human face 
is like asking him to work out a puzzle picture- 
map. 

^Descriptions of characters should not be elabo- 
rated in such a way that details are overdone and the 
impression given that the descriptions are there for 
their own sake, independently of their story value. 
A single impressionistic detail is crudely overem- 
phasized in Norris's "The Pit" (p. 10) : — 

" And all this beauty of pallid face and brown eyes 
was crowned by, and sharply contrasted with, the 
intense black of her hair, abundant, thick, extremely 
heavy, continually coruscating with sombre, murky 
reflections, tragic, in a sense vaguely portentous — 
the coiffure of a heroine of romance, doomed to dark 
crises." It takes an abnormally vivid imagination 
to foresee a tragic doom in the way a woman wears 
her hair. 

If details of personal appearance should be spar- 
ing, details of costume should be all the more so. 
Save for contributing to the effect of local color in 
historical romance or for portraying eccentricities of 
character, costume is of very slight importance for a 
story. To illustrate the lengths to which description 
of this sort is sometimes carried, let us consider 



CHARACTERIZATION 113 

the descriptive passages of "The Queen of Far- 
Away": 1 — 

"She was looking at him out of clear, dark eyes 
that brimmed with light and mischief. He noted 
that their pupils were of ebony and their irises of 
amber, that they were shaded by gold-tipped, dark 
lashes, and accented by slender brows outlining the 
arch of her ivory lids, and that they were set at a 
distance, maddeningly piquant, from a delicate, 
upturned nose. Her thin upper lip raised itself, 
on each side of the crease in its centre, into the two 
little red tips that actresses, in their make-up, always 
create or intensify. The lower lip, on the other 
hand, was distinctly full. When she smiled, as she 
did soon, it was vouchsafed to Carow to see that her 
mouth was precious with pearl. ..." 

"She wore a long pongee outer coat, with broad 
cuffs, and a series of three capes ; it was buttoned to 
the very hem with big pearl buttons. From the 
brim of her black straw hat hung a cobweb film of 
veil to just below the tip of her nose, and above that, 
draped over the brim, a thicker, heavier veil. She 
carried' in one hand, a pongee parasol and in the 
other, which was bare, she held a glove. ..." 

"He glanced inquiringly at his companion. 
Her lips were still smiling, but a velvety pink flush 

1 Everybody's, May, 1904. 



ii4 THE SHORT-STORY 

had crept to the soft hair-line that outlined wavily 
her low forehead and her pearly temples; it even 
dyed the cream of her soft, creased throat. ..." 

"Her color was receding by faint degrees. She 
smiled delicately and her coquettish lashes swept 
down, entirely obliterating the radiant eyes. ..." 

"How beautiful she was! How straight and 
elegant her lithe figure, swaying in the muffled folds 
of her long cloak. Her hair. The maze of its 
brightness where honey-color ran into gold and then 
both deepened gloriously into red, its distracting 
ripples, the big, soft bunch, like massy gold at her 
neck, the fine-spun ringlets that clustered about her 
little ears. And such eyes ! The depths of amber 
and gold in their irises, surrounding pupils like ebony, 
their look of radiant mischief, the coquettish sweep 
of their gold-tipped lashes. 

"He recalled the clear-cut, dewy corners of her 
lips, their luscious fulness, the two little red tips so 
distinctly outlined on each side of the crease in the 
upper lip, the line of pearl that her rippling laugh 
disclosed. The vision thrilled him. . % . ." 

"As before, she wore a long cloak, but this one was 
of heavy black satin, with cascades of lace. She wore 
on her head a huge fichu of soft, creamy, Spanish 
lace, but he could see that in her hair, built high into 
a marvel of waves and ripples, there were dying some 



CHARACTERIZATION 115 

little creamy garden roses. Through the opening of 
her cloak, it could be seen that she was wearing a 
light evening dress. ..." 

'"Take off your cloak!' he said, imperiously. 
'Let me look at you.'" 

"As though yielding, half through coquetry, half 
against her will, she slipped the big-sleeved cloak 
off, and let it fall into a glistening heap at her feet 
She was wearing a cream-colored crepe gown ; there 
were billows of yellowish old-looking lace about the 
neck and sleeves. The corsage left bare a square 
of her delicate flesh, the sleeves uncovered bare 
triangles of her dazzling shoulders. There was a 
string of pearls about her throat. 

"'Heavens, how lovely she is!' Carow thought. 
'Put this on,' he said, inconsistently and almost 
roughly, 'you'll catch cold.' He held it and she 
slipped her arms back into the capacious sleeves. 
The service brought him very near to her. Carow 
suddenly lost his head and took her in his arms. 
A moment later he released her muttering a shame- 
faced apology. With careful precision she adjusted 
the yellow scarf of Spanish lace about her neck. . . ." 

"She was dressed in a long, black gown, heavily 
sequined in black and silver. It left bare a rounded 
segment of her white neck and then it fell, moulding 
itself jealously to the lithe, elegant figure. Her 



n6 THE SHORT-STORY 

hair was knotted in a red-gold bunch on her white 
neck. She was a very pretty woman graciously 
close on thirty. ..." 

These are not all the passages of description, but 
they are sufficient to illustrate the emphasis on 
minute and somewhat fleshly details of physical 
appearance, and more particularly the exceedingly 
elaborate costuming of the heroine. The gold- 
tipped dark lashes and the honey-colored, gold, and 
red hair are sufficiently puzzling items, but the 
changes in costume fairly make one dizzy. Imagine 
the labor of the illustrator of this story endeavoring 
to follow out directions. The story happens to be 
clever and interesting as a whole, but this is because 
it has a plot sufficiently clever to hold attention in 
spite of overdone description. 

2. Analysis 

The special need of analysis in the short-story is 
in the exposition of a crisis in the life of the main 
character. Not all crises require analysis. Some 
pass simply and naturally into a decision which may 
be readily expressed by speech or action. Such is 
the decision in Hamlin Garland's "Under the Lion's 
Paw " : — 

"Butler shrank and quivered, expecting the blow; 



CHARACTERIZATION 117 

stood, held hypnotized by the eyes of the man whom 
he had a moment before despised — a man trans- 
formed into an avenging demon. But in the deadly 
hush between the lift of the weapon and its fall there 
came a gush of faint, childish laughter, and then 
across the range of his vision, far away and dim, he 
saw the bright head of his baby girl, as, with the pretty 
tottering run of a two-year-old, she moved across the 
grass of the dooryard. His hand relaxed ; the fork 
fell to the ground : his head lowered. 

"'Make out y'r deed an' mor'gage, an' git off'n 
my land, an' don't ye never cross my line agin; 
if f do, I'll kill ye.' " 

But there are crises which are more complex, 
where the play of motives becomes important for 
an understanding of the character. Even the 
most objective writer — Kipling, for example — 
uses analysis for such presentation. George 
Eliot excells in this work. Most of us, when 
we begin to analyze, are tempted to carry it 
too far. It should be remembered that prolonged 
analysis kills all other interest, and analysis of any 
sort suspends the narrative interest proper. It 
should therefore be used sparingly, especially if it is 
not superlatively clever. The best use that can be 
made of analysis in the short-story is to select care- 
fully those elements of character which are most 



n8 THE SHORT-STORY 

closely relevant to the main story situation, and to 
concentrate these elements upon the point at issue. 
Maupassant does this in "Moonlight," where the 
analysis is so very long as to seem at first reading 
disproportionate. 

</ 3. The Dramatic Method: Speech and Action 

The genuine narrative method of portraying char- 
acter is the dramatic one of making the characters 
talk and act. Description and exposition are valuable, 
but only as accessories. The narrative method is 
more lifelike and hence more convincing. The 
modern short-story makes a careful use of dialogue to 
suggest mental traits, and even moral ones. Mrs. 
Hauksbee talks herself into transparent clearness. 
So do many of George Eliot's characters. Although 
in real life deeds are more important indications of a 
person's character, in the world of fiction speech is 
fully as important, because it can be made to serve 
the author's purpose more subtly in revealing fine 
shades of thought and feeling. The play of emotion, 
the conflict of motives, all those complex inner pro- 
cesses which necessarily precede the more external 
expression of our character in action need to be 
suggested to the reader. And there is no better ve- 
hicle than the dialogue for carrying this information. 



CHARACTERIZATION 119 

Action there should be in every story, or there will 
be no progress. If possible, there should be some 
important action. Small actions can, however, 
be made very significant of character, as may be 
seen from a study of the side lines of action in "The 
Man Who Would be King." 

All of these methods of character portrayal may be 
combined to give the effect of impressionism. Traits 
selected with extreme care may be emphasized into 
something more than naturalness — this because 
the human mind tends normally to exaggerate 
that which it finds interesting or important for itself. 

4. The Final Interest in Character 

Not action, but motive gives the final interest in 
character. The character in fiction is rarely a 
photograph of an individual. Almost always it is 
the illustration of a motive or of a play of motives 
which normally results in character formation. 

5. The Subordination of Characters 

Inasmuch as the short-story has but a few char- 
acters, — and these, as has been said, artificially 
isolated from relatives and friends, — the problem of 
subordination of characters is not nearly so great as in 



120 THE SHORT-STORY 

the novel. Yet many an amateur story suffers from 
a lack of emphasis on one main character. Good 
stories have been written containing two important 
characters, or even three; but they were good be- 
cause the story was still seen from the point of view 
of one of these — and but one. Baldwin says r 1 
"One of the first questions in considering the prom- 
ise of any material is, Whose story it this for me ? 
... No story emerges until the narrator is domi- 
nated by one [character]." 

The events may be the same, but they change 
kaleidoscopically with every change in point of view. 
The main character having been chosen, the others 
should not be permitted to occupy the front of the 
stage. 

6. Recent Tendencies in Characterization 

The subordination of characters is now a rather 
more delicate piece of work in one respect than it 
has been hitherto. The types of hero and heroine 
have undergone a change. It is not usually through 
mere natural advantages, such as wealth, fame, 
beauty, physical perfections, etc., that the leading 
man and leading lady tower head and shoulders 
above the minor folk. The modern author has to 

1 "College Manual of Rhetoric," p. 142. 



CHARACTERIZATION 121 

reckon with a taste which prefers the normal, if not 
the every-day, in characters to the abnormal and 
unique. The cheap society novel still fashions 
heroes and heroines from the more or less accidental 
accompaniments of character. The cheap short- 
story book still thrills the reader with its morbid, 
freakish heroes. But in the better class of fiction, 
the writers have achieved success in proving the real 
worth of character to lie in its naturalness and its 
interest. So that, while minor eccentricities of 
character are eagerly sought out and emphasized 
for the sake of individualizing the hero or heroine, 
the larger aberrations from the normal and the 
natural are shunned. The first standard of char- 
acterization to-day is that of lifelikeness. The best 
characters are those which, in the large, are seen to 
be true to the pattern of our human nature. 

This growing realism in characterization is not so 
much in opposition to idealism as to romance. The 
ideal in human character will always be admired 
and sought after so long as there are worthy writers. 
But there is a noteworthy difference in the way of 
bringing out this ideal. We have come to realize 
that a very good man may have small weaknesses; 
in fact, most of the very good men we know are open 
to criticism on at least one point. The eminently 
natural way to picture such a man includes this flaw. 



122 THE SHORT-STORY 

Indeed, to many readers, the flaw seems to be a 
practical test of the genuineness of the man, who is, 
for this one defect, none the less a hero. Again, in 
place of the ready-made, highly idealized embodi- 
ment of goodness and nobility, we find, more and 
more, character in the process of becoming — charac- 
ter tempted and tried. So much fiction has been 
written and read that the leading types of human 
character are fairly well understood and easily rec- 
ognized by the reader. More interesting to-day than 
the exposition or even the dramatic revelation of a 
type is the picture of a struggle, the play of mo- 
tives, the decision for or against. The crisis story 
is a distinctively modern piece of work, exquisitely 
fitted to the tastes and tendencies of twentieth-century 
fiction. 

It is only natural that the period of youth or 
adolescence should be chosen as the richest field for 
story- writers. For it is then that the elements of 
character make new groupings. It is then that the 
person begins to know himself, to compare himself 
with others, to form judgments of character, of right 
and wrong ; to determine upon his own place among 
the world of people, and to work out his conception 
of his function in society. It is then that the real 
problems of environment in relation to character 
appear. For these reasons, rather than for the 



CHARACTERIZATION 123 

romantic charm of youth, the majority of interesting 
characters are rather young. Fortunately, there are 
some writers who have done for middle age and old 
age what every writer is willing to do for youth. 
Mary Wilkins Freeman has rather old heroes and 
heroines, for the most part, and they are by no means 
uninteresting. They hold their place in literature 
through a delicate idealization of the commonplace 
and the ordinary. 

It cannot be hidden that there is a place for the man 
of humble birth, who has had no means, — no educa- 
tional advantages, perhaps, — but who "gets there " 
just the same. The survival of the anecdote story 
of character shows that there is a demand to know 
about this type of man who succeeds, by toil, self- 
denial, and pluck, in winning his reward. Success 
is full of these "get-there" stories, published not for 
their literary merit, but for their practical value as 
exemplars. 1 The difference between the self-made 
hero in fiction and the hero of such anecdotes lies 
chiefly in the necessity of making the former plausible 
and real. Then, too, the victory over mere external 
circumstances, however satisfactory from a practical 
point of view, is not the highest victory for character 
formation. External conditions have been seen not 

1 A really literary story of this type is Gouverneur Morris's 
"Simon L'Ouvrier," Collier's Weekly, Aug. 25, 1906. 



i2 4 THE SHORT-STORY 

to have a compelling power over character and life. 
Inner conflicts have assumed greater importance and 
greater interest. The modern hero has something 
worse to fight than an evil world and selfish men — 
he has the evil motives of his own heart arrayed 
against him. The stage of action in the story of 
character is not always the great world of events: 
more often the real stage is behind the scenes. The 
great hero in fiction is no mere type, no trait personi- 
fied, no automaton predestined to go through certain 
movements to a certain goal, but a whole person, 
real and live ; not wholly good and not wholly bad ; 
complex, doubtful, problematic ; struggling, tempted, 
even sinning, it may be, — but on the whole and in the 
end, conquering, — a character interesting from start 
to finish in the process of becoming. 

The heroine, like the hero, has descended from the 
lofty pinnacle where she was stationed by roman- 
ticism, and now frequents the common walks of life. 
The beautiful, clinging, swooning, weeping, blushing, 
hysterical young woman who has worn the halo 
of romance through many centuries has been ex- 
terminated by a process very like natural selection 
and survival of the fittest. The American heroine of 
to-day is reasonably healthy, — perhaps even athletic, 
— and she does not hesitate to go where her brothers 
go and do pretty much the same things that they do. 



CHARACTERIZATION 125 

She has suffered a notable expansion (averagely 
speaking) of waist measure as well as brain; and, 
with the establishment of a standard of good health 
and common sense, has had to forego the time- 
honored code of actions mapped out for her by 
romanticists of old. Where the eighteenth- century 
heroine would weep or faint or have hysterics, the 
twentieth-century heroine calmly masters the situa- 
tion. In short, woman's character in fiction has 
lost, to some extent, that intangible atmosphere of 
romance and idealization ; it has lost many of the 
external manifestations of beauty, and possibly 
something of delicacy; but it has gained vastly in 
strength, in individuality, and hence in the true 
inwardness of beauty — nobility of character. 

7. The Names of Characters 

In an article on story-telling, 1 James Payn says : — 
"It is better for his own reputation that a writer 
risk a few actions for libel on account of unfortunate 
coincidences than that he should adopt the melan- 
choly device of using asterisks or blanks. With the 
minor novelists of a half century ago, it was quite 
common to introduce the characters as Mr. A. and 
Mr. B., and very difficult the readers found it to 

1 Living Age, 146 : 412. 



126 THE SHORT-STORY 

interest themselves in the fortunes and misfortunes 
of an initial. . . . 

"'The elder and taller was the fascinating Lord 
B. ; the younger, the beautiful Patty G., the cobbler's 
daughter.'" 

There should be names for all the characters. 
Most of the names, and certainly those of the chief 
characters, should be highly individual. A hero does 
not star well, as a rule, under the name of Smith or 
Jones. The commonplace name is undesirable for 
the main characters, at least. 

A name should not be incongruous in its suggestion 
with the conception of the character. For example, 
a Jack does not commit suicide convincingly. The 
name could be made to give a subtle suggestion of 
the character, so that, after reading the story, it is 
seen to be eminently appropriate. Such a name is 
that of Sir Willoughby Patterne in Meredith's 
"The Egoist"; and such is Gabriel Oake. In 
introducing a "mother's boy" in "The Pelican," 
Edith Wharton says, "His name was Launcelot 
[Amyot], and he looked it." The very fanciful 
name should be avoided, unless it is used purposely 
for comical effect; so also should names which 
offend by harsh combinations of sounds and names 
which do not seem to belong together. An effort 
should be made to secure a variety of names, It 



CHARACTERIZATION 127 

was sheer poverty of invention that led an author 
to put in one story three towns named respectively 
Melville, Belville, and Bell view, and another to name 
two leading characters Anville and Orville. With- 
in these restrictions, there is still wide liberty in the 
choice of names for purposes of fiction. 

The names should be introduced into the story 
naturally and easily, not apologetically or conspicu- 
ously, as if it were remarkable that the fictitious 
character should own a name. And the reader 
should be made to believe that the names are real. 

"The controversy was closed by a bet between 
Tom and his guest, whom we may call Earl." 

" Grace — for that was her name — sat down on 
the veranda." Such a manifestly tacked-on name 
is better than a blank or an initial; but it is not 
thoroughly convincing. 



CHAPTER IX 



DIALOGUE 



Dialogue has been defined as "composition which 
produces the effect of human talk — as nearly as 
possible the effect of conversation which is over= 
heard." » 

The first requisite for good dialogue appears 
in this definition. The talk in a story should 
seem to be actual human talk which has really 
taken place. It must not be merely possible; it 
must be convincing. 

This suggests the second requirement. In order 
that the talk shall be convincing, it must be appro- 
priate to the character who is made to utter it. It 
must be individual. No conversation can give the 
impression of reality, if the characters have been 
endowed by the author with a common habit or man- 
ner of speech. The importance of individual forms 
of speech for characterization can hardly be over- 
emphasized, inasmuch as this, more than any other 
one thing, marks the difference between live creations 
and automatic wooden talking-pieces. 

The speech of a person should, of course, vary with 

1 Bates, " Talks on Writing English," series 2, p. 213. 
128 



DIALOGUE 129 

the changing situations in which he is placed, with 
any marked development in his thought-life, and 
with the changing emotions which are supposed to 
stir him. But it must not lose character. It must 
be continuously consistent — recognizable through- 
out the story as the speech of one particular charac- 
ter, suitable to him and to him alone. This applies 
literally to all the important characters of the story, 
and to such of the minor ones as are drawn with any 
defmiteness. There are, of course, in many stories, 
plot-ridden, insignificant personalities which in some 
way serve the action, but which do not seem to de- 
serve or need the added prominence of an individual 
form of speech. If it is a part of the author's purpose 
to keep these characters shadowy and indistinct, 
he refrains with reason from individualizing their 
remarks. The rule holds good, however, that for 
strong, distinct characterization, a special habit 
or manner of thought and speech is as essential 
for story purposes as a special habit of action. To 
go to the novel for an example, mark the fine shades 
of difference between Maggie Tulliver's aunts, as 
brought out in the various scenes where they come 
together for a family conclave, as in Chapter XII. 
And in the trying on of Mrs. Pullet's new bonnet 
(Chapter IX) one phase of each sister's character 
is playfully delineated by her speech. 



i 3 o THE SHORT-STORY 

The problem of individualization of dialogue is 
one of the first to be met by the writer of the story of 
character. The most striking faults of dialogue are 
due to a lack of realization of the characters and a 
frank disregard of their natural possibilities and 
limitations. A few crude illustrations drawn from 
students' work will serve to show the need of a study 
of the probabilities in speech making. The heroine, 
a three-year-old, starts off the story : — 

"'Say, Bill,' remarked little Isadora. 

"'What it it, little one?' asked the big scene- 
shifter, as he took her up in his arms. 

"'I'm a-goin' to speak to the manager and have 
him cut out that cave scene in the fourth act. I don't 
like to see them chain my papa down.' 

"'But they won't hurt him, sweetheart,' answered 
the man. 

"'No, but I jes' don't like to see 'em do it. I'm 
goin' to speak to the manager, Bill.' " 

The feeling which animates the speech is entirely 
possible, but the manner of expression is essentially 
foreign to the average three-year-old. While it 
must be admitted that there are precocious young- 
sters in real life, it is to be remembered that their 
conversation in a story is considerably more dis- 
tressing because less convincing. A prematurely 
excellent expression makes any speech unnatural. 



DIALOGUE 131 

"Then Tommy would swing his knife and fork 
in the air and shout, 'I can get home Christmas 
Eve, and will I not have a time on Christmas!'" 
Imagine a real live Tommy shouting such a piece 
of rhetoric to the accompaniment of swinging knife 
and fork ! No, that Tommy was an over-educated 
little prig, who made the remark in a tone of well- 
bred quiet, with a covert glance at his elders to note 
its effect upon them. And, instead of swinging his 
knife and fork, he laid them side by side, with neat 
precision, on his plate. Moreover, Thomas was his 
real name. 

Dialogue should be true to type as well as to 
individual. There is no reason why the hired man 
of a farmer may not use excellent grammar. But 
when the farmer himself is represented as a man of 
rough and slovenly speech and the hired man in- 
quires, with much correctness, "Why, you have 
found my money, have you not?" the reader needs 
some explanation of the seeming incongruity. 

Lack of realization of a definite speech as fitting 
a special type of character sometimes causes absurd 
inconsistencies. Witness this mixture of coarseness 
and elegance in the form of speech of an ignorant 
Southern white. 

He speaks of his daughter to a stranger whom 
he has just met : — 



132 THE SHORT-STORY 

"'You would think she had been accustomed to 
silks and velvets all her life,' he said, admiringly, 
speaking in the slow, drawling accents peculiar to 
the poorer class of southern whites. 'But Claudine 
was always a wonderful girl. Takes after her mother 
in looks. I have never seen a fine lady who could 
hold a candle to her.' 

'"These elegant surroundings become Claudine 
immensely,' he went on. 'But she has me to thank 
for them. It was a lucky day when Colonel Rayne 
fell in love with her pretty face. But she never 
knew how to look out for her own interests. She 
would have sent him adrift, like a fool, had I not 
stepped in and interfered. It is not every day that 
one has the opportunity to become the mistress of a 
fine plantation like Belle vue.' 

"'No.' 

"'I advised Claudine to strike while the iron was 
hot. She knew better than to disregard my ex- 
pressed wishes. The wooing was remarkably brief. 
I took care that it should be. The colonel's infatua- 
tion for her beauty was too intense to last. He is 
very kind to her still — it is his nature. But, 
between you and me, he would give all his old boots 
to be free.'" 

This is made-up speech, by no means continu- 
ously consistent. Effective dialogue, on the other 



DIALOGUE 133 

hand, seems the spontaneous and characteristic 
expression of an individual under the stress of a 
special situation. 

In the story of character, the purpose of the dia- 
logue is to portray or suggest a mood. Here the 
test of worth is the importance of that mood or mental 
state for character delineation, and its interest for 
the reader. Dialogue should not merely give an 
insight into the character's mental workings: if 
it is to be of story interest, it should at some point in 
the narrative be charged with feeling. Much of the 
effect of a " crisis" story of character hinges on the 
dramatic intensity of the dialogue through which 
the speaker reveals the situation. 

Dramatic intensity dialogue cannot have unless 
it is closely relevant to the situation. In a long novel 
or in a purely humorous short-story, dialogue may 
safely be run off the track in order to portray eccen- 
tricities or even to throw a sidelight on a minor 
phase of character. Irrelevance is Samuel Weller's 
mainspring. But the limitations of space and the 
demands of unity forbid the story-writer such di- 
gressions. The ideal dialogue is not only closely 
relevant, but even indispensable to the situation. 
It not only reveals the thought or feeling of an in- 
dividual — it really pushes the action of the piece. 
More than this, if it is suggestive, it can be made to 



134 THE SHORT-STORY 

imply whole volumes of back history. Thus the 
author can relieve himself of a burden of tedious 
explanation. But the dialogue should never be 
weighed down so that the reader feels that he is com- 
pelled to pause while the characters converse for his 
benefit. In the scene from " The Mill on the Floss," 
where the sisters meet with Mrs. Tulliver in family 
council (Chapter III), not only are four women, 
three men, and two children distinctly individualized 
by what they say, but the whole back history is so 
well implied that the chapter would stand alone. 
Yet nowhere is the dialogue clogged by explana- 
tory purpose. 

In sharp contrast with such individual and dra- 
matic dialogue is that which is made to carry the 
author's opinions, theories, imaginings, or positive 
knowledge. The reader who meets such a thought 
as this in the middle of a love-scene feels that he 
has truly come upon a bit of cork in his wine : — 

"'But now I'm the happiest mortal on earth.' 

"'Next to me,' interrupted Jeannette, 'for you see 
happiness consists in the overplus of expectations. '" 

This is a downright abuse of power. The reader 
has a right to protest against such deceptive doses 
of information. If an author wishes chiefly to dis- 
cuss a topic, he should be honest enough to write an 
essay and have done with it. He should remember 



DIALOGUE 135 

that "the use of quotation marks does not convert 
a passage into dialogue." 1 

Dialogue should have an interest of its own, aside 
from its function of characterization and suggestion 
of the circumstances. It should be made attractive, 

if possible, by wit, humor, brightness, or sheer. 

individuality. The best way to accomplish this is 
by placing the characters at an interesting situation. 
The commonplace talk of ordinary people is not 
interesting except to themselves at the time that it 
is uttered. Most of us would be astonished if we 
could have recorded and rehearsed for us a day of 
our ordinary conversation. We would blush at our 
redundancy of dulness. Fortunate it is that so 
much conversation is not only never recorded and 
reported, but never thoroughly listened to. The 
author's effort at realism is responsible for much of 
the inane prosing on the part of characters. We 
want real talk in stories, of course, but the real talk 
of people at special moments in their best trim for 
conversation. They must be under the influence of 
some impulse, excitement, or emotion. 

Yet it must be remembered, in trying to make the 
conversation unusually interesting, that dull com- 
monplaceness is no more objectionable to the average 
reader than is the extremity of cleverness. As soon 

1 Bates, " Talks on Writing English," series 2, p. 211. 



136 THE SHORT-STORY 

as an author is impressed with the idea that he can 
teach his people to say brilliant things, he is tempted 
to make them talk in a series of explosive epigrams, 
as wearing as the setting off of a bunch of fire- 
crackers and, after all is over, as empty. Some of 
them even fail to "go off" at all. 

Hardly less artificial than epigrammatic conver- 
sation is that deeply intellectual kind of talk which 
we find in the modern psychological novel and the 
very smart short-story. Perfection in form, it is 
spun to the finest thread of nothingness of content. 
Meredith's "The Egoist" has a number of exercises 
in conversation which are extremely trying to the 
average intellect. James's "The Tragic Muse" 
abounds in over-subtle conversation. And Edith 
Wharton's "The Twilight of the God" is only for 
the enlightened few. It is one thing to suggest, 
and another to mystify. This modern form of 
dialogue is just a little too fine and thin, a little too 
uniformly sharp and clever, to be mistaken for a 
reproduction of the conversation of real life. 

The tendency of the healthier school of fiction of 
to-day is to endeavor to secure the effect of ordinary 
conversation. This does not mean portraiture of an 
actual bit of talk. It is stupid to imitate the com- 
monplace daily conversation of real life. In talking 
to our friends, we allow ourselves to be inaccurate 



DIALOGUE 137 

or incomplete, trusting much to their intuition and 
their knowledge of our characters ; or we fill out the 
meaning by gestures, smiles, and changes of expres- 
sion, or allusion to some common understanding. 
Most of these are awkward to render in a story. 
Perhaps we repeat — most of us do — to make sure 
that we are understood. This would be ridiculous 
in print. Actual conversation of ordinary people 
on ordinary occasions would seem to be intended 
for a burlesque on human nature. To say that there 
are, in actual experience, thousands and thousands 
of conversations which would appear in print un- 
natural, absurd, impossible, is as much a truism as it 
would be to say that there are in nature many skies 
which never will be painted by an artist who values 
his reputation. Trollope says, in his Autobiography : 
"The ordinary talk of ordinary people is carried 
on in short, sharp, expressive sentences, which, very 
frequently, are never completed, the language of 
which, even among educated people, is often incor- 
rect. The novel-writer, in constructing his dialogue, 
must so steer between absolute accuracy of language 
— which would give to his conversation an air of 
pedantry — and the slovenly inaccuracy of ordinary 
talkers — which, if closely followed, would offend 
by an appearance of grimace — as to produce upon 
the ear of his readers a sense of reality." 



138 THE SHORT-STORY 

The problem is, to choose from all the actual 
things the one or two little things which will suggest 
the rest. Hardly any conversation needs to be 
repeated in full; hardly any will bear it. The 
story- writer selects, combines, gives us typical bits, — 
mere snatches of conversation which are significant 
alike of character and situation. To select the sig- 
nificant remarks which will carry along with the 
mere words the tone, the gesture, the attitude, the full" 
meaning of the speaker; to make reply fit previous 
remark; and to bind all the talk of the various 
characters into the complex yet harmonious entity 
of a single scene or incident with a meaning of its 
own, requires dramatic instinct of the highest and 
finest type. 

Perhaps the most puzzling question in the han- 
dling of dialogue is, How far shall the common talk 
of everyday life be idealized? And what turn shall 
this idealization take? The old school of fiction 
writers "ironed out" their dialogue until it was pain- 
fully flat and extensive, and polished and dead. 
The old-fashioned novel gives us hardly a glimpse 
of the power of dialogue to reveal character in a 
single flash and to push the story faster. The talk 
is careful, strained, laborious; given either to argu- 
ment and sermonette or to the expression of polite 
nothings in a sonorous and inflated style. Such 



DIALOGUE 139 

fiction is a sufficient warning against formalizing 
the dialogue too much. 

Yet there is a very legitimate and necessary pro- 
cess of toning down of certain kinds of speech. The 
repetition of mannerisms becomes, in the hands of 
an unskilful person, very tiresome. The amateur 
represents the speech of the college student by orna- 
menting every other sentence with phrases such as 
running in, cut, flunk, stunt, prexy, etc. He repre- 
sents the street gamin by unspeakable curtailing of 
words and the concentrated essence of slang of the 
lower sort, with hardly enough of normal speech to 
join the abnormal utterances together. He pictures 
the Western bully as pouring out torrents of pro- 
fanity at every breath, seemingly regretting that he 
had to use some prepositions and conjunctions which 
are not profane. In short, the beginner in story- 
writing forgets that written conversation has much 
greater intensity and concentration than the spoken. 
If one were to reproduce phonographically the con- 
versation of some college students, doubtless the re- 
sult would be somewhat slangy. Printed, it would 
seem even more so than it is. This is partly 
because the reader goes about ten times as fast as the 
writer, and the expressions which seem to the author 
very far apart are to him close together. The writer, 
close at hand, sees things microscopically, doing 



i 4 o THE SHORT-STORY 

justice to every little point. The reader, away off, 
gets a general impression, — sees things in per- 
spective, — and eccentricities in speech are the things 
that show up in this general survey. From this fact 
we may deduce the rule that exaggerated details 
of speech must not be brought close together; for 
the reader will narrow the spaces and bring them 
closer yet. 

In connection with the subject of mannerisms 
it may be well to mention that people must never be 
represented quite as low as they are, by talk. For in 
real life there are nearly always qualifying features 
that condone the lowness. Profanity, for instance, 
must be used sparingly in a story, or it becomes 
preposterous. Vulgar slang is subject to the same 
need of editing. In sketching individuals of the 
lowest type, special care must be taken in editing 
the dialogue. This does not mean that the life must 
be taken out of it. The reason for sparing details of 
low and vulgar speech is not so much a moral as an 
artistic one. The exaggeration of such details be- 
comes disgusting. 

Another necessary bit of editing is the breaking 
up of dialogue. In technical discussion, explanation, 
or argument we can tolerate a long speech if we 
must. But the average novel that is made to sell 
abounds in speeches that are too long for the pleasure 



DIALOGUE 141 

of the reader. Many of them are omitted entirely 
or hastily skimmed by the impatient seeker after 
story interest. A long-winded character does not 
appear natural save as a burlesque on humanity. 
Not that there are no incessant talkers nor that they 
are not very common indeed. They buttonhole 
us on every street corner and lecture us from every 
platform. But the writer of fiction has tacitly prom- 
ised his readers that he will not bore them this way. 

We must remember, too, that speech which is read 
appears longer than that which is heard, because it is 
measured by the eye, and because the small relieving 
accessories of actual speech are seldom even suc- 
cessfully hinted at. Speech should be shortened 
not only for interest but for the effect of lifelikeness. 
The skilful interspersion of trenchant commentary 
not only relieves the dialogue by interruption, but 
can be made a very helpful accessory in indicating 
the mood or manner of the speaker. It must not, 
however, as in the hands of some analysts, overtop 
the significance of the speech itself. The comment 
need not be overdone or monotonously worded, as 
in this bit of dialogue from James's "The Tragic 
Muse": — 

"'I must say — about him — you're not very 
nice,' Biddy ventured to remark to her brother, 
hesitating, and even blushing a little. 



142 THE SHORT-STORY 

"'You make up for it, my dear,' the young man 
answered, giving her chin — a very charming, 
rotund little chin — a friendly whisk with his fore- 
finger. 

"'I can't imagine what you've got against him,' 
her ladyship murmured, gravely. 

'"Dear mother, it's disappointed fondness,' Nick 
argued. 'They won't answer one's notes; they 
won't let one know where they are nor what to ex- 
pect. "Hell has no fury like a woman scorned"; 
nor like a man either.' 

"'Peter has such a tremendous lot to do — it's 
a very busy time at the Embassy ; there are sure to be 
reasons,' Biddy explained, with her pretty eyes. 

"'Reasons enough, no doubt!' said Lady Agnes, 
who accompanied these words with an ambiguous 
sigh, however, as if in Paris even the best reasons 
would naturally be bad ones. 

" ' Doesn't Julia write* to you, doesn't she answer 
you the very day ? ' Grace inquired, looking at Nick 
as if she were the courageous one. 

"He hesitated a moment, returning her glance with 
a certain severity. '-What do you know about my 
correspondence?' " 

The taste for brief and broken speech is indicated 
by the history of paragraphing. Whatever may be 
said of the increasingly logical effect of the para- 



DIALOGUE 143 

graph in exposition and argumentation, a mere glance 
over the history of the narrative paragraph is suffi- 
cient to discover that it is very little governed by 
logical principles, and very largely by the more 
mechanical principles of ease and variety. The 
device of devoting a paragraph to each remark of 
a continuous conversation (including, of course, the 
essential accompaniments of that remark) is adapted 
chiefly to the reader's ease. Conversation is no 
longer paragraphed by its subject-matter. 

Owing to the artificial paragraphing of dialogue, 
the modern short-story has two conspicuous advan- 
tages over earlier fiction. First, the brief dialogue 
contributes largely to the effect of briskness of move- 
ment. It is inviting to eye and mind alike. And, 
second, the author is spared much of the labor and 
monotony of repeated indication of the speaker. 
This would seem, at first thought, a minor consider- 
ation. When the indication is made easy and varied, 
we are not conscious of it at all, unless we have a 
vague feeling that our author has a knack of grace- 
fully suggesting the accessories of conversation. 
But when the indication is formal or monotonous, 
it at once obtrudes itself unpleasantly upon our 
consciousness. We have learned a great deal about 
the mechanism of dialogue since Defoe wrote 
" Colonel Jacque" : — 



i 4 4 THE SHORT-STORY 

'"Hark ye, young man, how old are you?' says 
my master ; and so our dialogue began. 

Jacque. Indeed, sir, I do not know. 

Master. What is your name ? " 

Arlo Bates says : 1 — 

"The variety does not come by chance, but by 
care and a finely trained perception of the value of 
trifles. It is of importance that the exact significance 
and intensity of the verb employed be taken into 
account. . . . The author should have a sense of 
the mood and manner of his personages so clear and 
so fine that only one of all the possible words shall 
seem to him to fit. If his dialogue is at all related to 
real life, it will so vary in its fine shadings that the 
terms indicating the manner of utterance will vary 
naturally and inevitably." 

The modern author almost unconsciously varies 
his introductions of the speeches of his characters. 
But that this has not always been the practice among 
writers of fiction may be illustrated by a bit of the 
elegant conversation in Madame D'Arblay's "Eve- 
lina":— 

"And here, whilst I was looking for the books, I was 
followed by Lord Orville. He shut the door after he 
came in, and, approaching me with a look of anxiety, 
said, 'Is this true, Miss Anville — are you going?' 
1 " Talks on Writing English," Series r, p. 256, 



DIALOGUE 145 

" 'I believe so, my lord,' said 7, still looking for 
the books. - 

" ' So suddenly, so unexpectedly : must I lose you ? ' 

"'No great loss, my lord,' said 7, endeavoring to 
speak cheerfully. 

"'Is it possible,' said he, gravely, 'Miss Anville 
can doubt my sincerity?' 

"'I can't imagine,' cried I, 'what Mrs. Selwyn has 
done with those books.' 

"'Would to heaven,' continued he, 'I might flatter 
myself you would allow me to prove it ! ' 

"'I must run upstairs,' cried I, greatly confused, 
'and ask what she has done with them.' 

"'You are going, then,' cried he, taking my hand, 
1 and you give me no hope of any return ! Will you 
not, my too lovely friend, will you not teach me, 
with fortitude like your own, to support your ab- 
sence ? ' 

"'My lord,' cried 7, endeavoring to disengage my 
hand, ' pray let me go ! ' 

"'I will,' cried he, to my inexpressible confusion, 
dropping on one knee, 'if you wish me to leave 
you.' 

"'Oh, my lord,' exclaimed 7, 'rise, I beseech you; 
rise. Surely your lordship is not so cruel as to mock 
me.' 

"'Mock you!' repeated he, earnestly, 'no, I 

L 



146 THE SHORT-STORY 

revere you. I esteem and admire you above all 
human beings.' " 

The extensive use of dialogue in the short-story is a 
distinctively modern tendency. Perhaps this is the 
most striking departure that has been made from 
the practice of the early masters of the art of story- 
writing. Irving, Hawthorne, and Poe all used dia- 
logue, it is true ; but they kept it strictly subordinate, 
as a process, to their own narrative of the action. 
The early dialogue had little of the dramatic inten- 
sity, of the subtle suggestiveness of the dialogue of 
to-day. There is no doubt that the writer of short - 
stories has now, in mechanically perfected dialogue, 
an added resource not only for making his story 
interesting, but for fine effects in characterization. 
Nor is there any doubt, on the other hand, that this 
splendid accessory of narration is occasionally 
overworked. 

The dialogue short-story is a fad of our day, a 
fashionable experiment in literature. Here the char- 
acters do all the work, — reveal themselves, hint 
foundation facts, suggest setting, shift scenes, and 
carry the burden of the plot — and all by means of 
conversation. If this is done successfully within 
the limitations of the short- story, it argues skill and 
cleverness on the part of the author. Its value is an- 
other question. The device serves fairly well to ren- 



DIALOGUE 147 

der a single striking thought in a very few striking 
scenes. But here we challenge the drama to a contest 
which is bound to be unequal. The chief charm of 
such an artificial type of story must consist in its 
suggestiveness — in its fragmentary character. If 
all short-stories were so limited, we should sadly miss 
the excellence of the author's occasional descriptive 
touches, and of his own swift revelation of the main- 
spring of a character or a situation, as well as the 
beautiful simplicity of narrative itself. It is safe 
to predict that the over-emphasis on dialogue as a 
narrative form will in due time correct itself. It is 
a noteworthy fact that the most enduring stories, 
long or short, are those in which dialogue is not the 
only or even the predominant element. 

The excellence, as well as the limitations, of the 
dialogue short-story may be studied in Ollivant's 
"The Lord, and the Lady's Glove." 1 Here the 
dialogue carries the whole plot (which is sufficiently 
slight), and conveys a lively notion of the characters 
and of their relation to one another at a special point 
of time — a strictly unified, almost a momentary 
situation. The dialogue is polished, clever, fine-spun, 
expanding the situation to the utmost. But occa- 
sionally it grows wearisome through its excess of 
cleverness. There seem to be two gifts necessary 

1 McClure's, February, 1902. 



i 4 8 THE SHORT-STORY 

for the best dialogue : psychological insight and dra- 
matic skill. Kipling has enough of the former, and he 
has the latter in marked degree. Ollivant, in "The 
Lord, and the Lady's Glove," has a predominance of 
psychological insight, very fine — indeed, a little too 
fine and subtle for the enjoyment of many readers. 
He seems to have been tempted to play unduly with 
the situation, developing small points too elaborately. 
It is noteworthy that this story, like most skilful 
exercises in dialogue, does not "arrive." It simply 
presents a story situation, isolated, fragmentary. 
This much dialogue can do well by itself. More than 
this it should not try to do. 



CHAPTER X 

THE SETTING 

We may say, in general, that the function of the 
setting is to furnish, in the best possible way for any 
given story, the conditions of time and place and 
characters which shall make that story possible and 
actual. But the setting may have a variety of special 
uses. It may merely furnish foundation facts nec- 
essary for our understanding of the situation, with- 
out actually influencing in any way the outcome 
of the plot or the development of characters. Setting 
of this sort should be very slightly emphasized, lest 
it interfere with the narrative purpose. The neces- 
sary information should be given as easily and nat- 
urally as possible, that it may not read like the con- 
ditions for an algebraic problem. And care must be 
used in determining what is necessary information. 
Some authors seem to be tempted to "take an account 
of stock" every time a character turns around. 
Descriptive passages which do not influence plot or 
characters are a mere clog to the short-story. Few 
readers care to construct imaginary scenes which are 

149 



150 THE SHORT-STORY 

not of value to the narrative. And, as a matter of 
fact, large masses of descriptive details at the opening 
of a story usually fail to be reconstructed by the 
reader. Often they are hastily skimmed or omitted 
altogether. The beginner in story- writing should 
learn to regard his initial studies in adjectives as a 
mere preliminary exercise toward getting started. 

If description in the mass is objectionable in the 
short-story, occasional touches of description are 
none the less to be desired. Simple narrative like 
that of the Book of Ruth can succeed in seeming 
lifelike with very little of description. But the more 
complex stories of our day are dependent largely, 
for their realistic effect, upon the "small, familiar 
touch, making one see." And if one were to select 
a single point of difference between the low-grade 
story (which is found in some newspapers and the 
poorer magazines) and the literary masterpiece, 
possibly the lack or the abuse of setting would be 
chosen as most obvious. Excellence of idea, excel- 
lence of plot, fail through lack of ability to realize 
a situation in its entirety and picture it suggestively 
to others. Narrative unfolds a line of action. Short- 
story endeavors to suggest a single situation or a 
series of closely related, developing situations in such 
a way as to make them real and interesting. It is 
by the aid of what Ho wells calls "little miracles of 



THE SETTING 151 

observation" that the illusion of real life can be so 
rapidly and completely given. An excellent setting 
has real story value. 

A setting may, as in the romance and the story of 
manners, have in its elements of time and place a 
definite value for both development of plot and 
rendering of characters. This is the just and natural 
use of setting, giving the actual environment of the 
life of a particular story, and lending charm as 
well as verity. Thus, Scott's historical romances are 
largely dependent, for their verisimilitude, upon his 
excellent use of setting. And perhaps the large 
majority of sectional short-stories have the setting 
of time and place and customs for their main stock 
in trade. Local color has played a sufficiently im- 
portant part in the art of fiction ever since the time 
of Scott. That the local short-story has had a real 
place in literature and still has it, may be proved by a 
glance over the files of almost any high-grade maga- 
zine for the last twenty years. Romanticists and 
realists unite in attention to the small details of set- 
ting. But the pendulum threatens now to swing in 
the opposite direction. Critics are ready to warn 
against exaggerated emphasis on this perfectly 
natural and legitimate source of interest. Peculiari- 
ties and novelties of sectional life, they say, are 
lacking in permanent and universal interest. This 



152 THE SHORT-STORY 

is doubtless true. Peculiarities and novelties alone 
may make a striking, but never a great short-story. 
But unique setting may, with the help of unique 
characters which it aptly fits or a unique story tone 
or motive, achieve something very like a literary 
value. Witness the work of Kipling and Harte 
and Garland, of Cable and Page and Lane and 
Allen, of Mary Wilkins Freeman and Sarah Orne 
Jewett — and, in fact, of every one of our modern 
story- writers who has accomplished creation of char- 
acter and framed it about with local interest. 

A study of the work of these writers will show 
how it is that the peculiar, the local, the incidental, 
can be made of permanent and general interest. It 
is because the scenes described, the peculiar traits 
and customs of the people, are never there for them- 
selves alone or as a mere device for catching interest, 
but always for the sake of heightening, either by 
harmony or by offset, some universal trait or type 
of character — some great fundamental truth of 
human nature or human life. The scenes are in no 
way separable from the story. 

We call such a use of setting structural because 
it is so intimately bound up with the development of 
the characters. We may describe as structural also 
such description as is essential to the plot. In be- 
ginning "The Gold-Bug," Poe indulges in a some- 



THE SETTING 153 

what elaborate description of the island, a description 
whose real import appears only as the plot unfolds. 
Morrison's "On the Stairs" (" Tales of Mean 
Streets") depends almost entirely for its interest upon 
the setting. If such a setting be compared with the 
imaginative, detached scenery of "Rip Van Winkle," 
it will be seen that there is a wide difference between 
the structural and the accidental use of setting. 
Since the time of Poe there has been an increasing 
effort to secure exquisite harmony in background. 
In Hamlin Garland's "A Branch Road," the back- 
ground is the story. The exact ethical problem 
posed never could have been without the precise 
conditions so realistically presented. The same is 
true of his "Up the Coulee." The story is a prob- 
lem in environments. 

Besides furnishing environment of characters 
and the preconditions of plot, setting may be used 
for contrast or harmony with the essential idea of a 
story or with its mood and tone. No one has sur- 
passed Poe in the art of setting the tone of a story 
by the introductory paragraphs. The much-quoted 
paragraph of description at the opening of "The 
Fall of the Melancholy House of Usher" will serve 
for illustration. The reader is drawn at once by the 
atmosphere of gloom into the tragic mood. Every 
word of description carries with it a dead weight of 



154 THE SHORT-STORY 

impending disaster. Hamlin Garland makes a simi- 
lar if less conspicuous use of setting in "Under 
the Lion's Paw." 

A bit of nature may be made to harmonize with the 
mood of a character in a story, as in the two excellent 
descriptive paragraphs at the crises in Meredith's 
"The Ordeal of Richard Feverel." In the short- 
story, as well as in the novel, such a use of setting 
has long been customary. 

But in real life, nature does not always fit our 
moods, nor do we always adapt ourselves to hers. 
And characters often stand out in sturdy contrast 
with their whole environment. Perhaps it is a 
recognition of this fact, or perhaps it is merely a dis- 
taste for the more familiar principle of harmony, 
that has led many modern writers to use their scen- 
ery and their descriptions of characters as strong 
offset for the theme and the mood of the story. 
Thus in "Emmy," 1 a story which brings for a time 
dull misery of mood, Mrs. Wilkins Freeman uses 
the colorless setting to throw into high relief one 
bright, warm, living fact — the love of the young 
New England girl. The landscape along the bluff 
is bleak and dreary. All is purposeless, wind-blown 
— generally lacking in warmth of color and vigor 
of life. The very existence of Emmy is a barren 

1 Century, 19 : 499. 



THE SETTING 155 

waste until the one brief season of love, when she 
rises from the dead level of monotony to the height 
of the heroic. 

The same principle of contrast is elaborately 
illustrated in the introductory paragraph of "The 
Last Choice of Crusty Dick" : * — 

"It was a very commonplace, uninteresting spot, 
which one would be sure to forget within a single 
day. There are a million such places, more or less, 
in the arid southwest. All around, as far as the eye 
could reach, the level plain was set with sparse 
clumps of prickly-pear and grease weed, but such 
things really count for nothing in such a country. 
A mile or more to the east, a barren red hill had, 
once upon a time, wakened to life and heaved itself 
aloft ; but that was long, long ago — so very long 
the hill itself appeared to have forgotten about it. 
The heat waves that flickered in the air distorted 
the rugged outlines, and set them in seeming motion, 
as though the hill were about to move again. But all 
the desert knew better, for, in all the ages since it had 
possessed itself of that country, that hill had con- 
tinually threatened to move, notwithstanding which, 
it had not once changed its position. So the thin, 
dry grass twisted and curled back upon itself and 
tried, in every other way, to withdraw itself from the 

1 McClure's, December, 1902. 



156 THE SHORT-STORY 

terrible heat of the sun, and had not even a languid 
apprehension that anything would happen. 

"To the west, right at hand, as one might say, a 
red, granite rock, big as a house, had in other ages 
burst the bonds of the earth, and stuck its head out 
in the air. But so hot did it find it, and so dull, 
it was plainly sorry of its reckless irruption; it 
drooped repentantly, as if promising never to do it 
again. 

"In all that commonplace of desolation, absolutely 
the only thing worth looking at was a slender trickle 
of water, which perseveringly pushed itself up, along 
the break in the earth made by the protruding rock. 
In any other country, if anybody had ever noticed 
its existence, it would have been called a seep, and it 
would have been set about thickly with waving flags 
and nodding ferns. In the desert, it was a spring, 
known and honored by every lonesome, wandering 
man and beast on one side of the great range, and it 
was ornamented by a straggling fringe of dry, white 
bones, which lay upon its bosom like a string of 
pearls adorning the neck of a bride. 

"If it be true that every landscape has a story of 
its own, which can be read in the expression of its 
features, then one looking at that spot would be 
justified in believing himself able to see, as plainly 
as if it had been written in the palm of his hand, these 



THE SETTING 157 

words, ' Since the dawn of creation nothing whatever 
has happened here.' Yet, within the memory of 
men still living, that rock has looked down upon at 
least one ambush and massacre, as dreary as the 
scene that surrounded it, and God alone knows what 
other horrors it has witnessed. 

"It was in the morning, with the sun part way up 
the sky, when all around the eastern side of the rock, 
a swirling tangle of men and horses, of wagons and 
harness, an intricate and confused current of dis- 
order, set slowly toward the spring. Along the 
edges, the sparse bunches of grease weed and prickly- 
pear were exploding rapidly, going pop, pop, pop, 
as if the surface of the desert were breaking out in a 
noisy eruption. Out of the popping there rose curls 
of white smoke, ascending vertically through the 
dead air, climbing steadily, as though set upon some 
lofty, common errand." 

A more abstracted use of setting is found in the 
type of narrative which exists for the purpose of 
enforcing a particular idea. Here the setting must 
be brought into harmony with the life or inner mean- 
ing — the essential truth which gives the story its 
significance. The finest model in producing such 
a subtle harmony of atmosphere is that writer who 
most delicately enforces spiritual ideas — Nathaniel 
Hawthorne. 



158 THE SHORT-STORY 

The setting of a story may once have been fur- 
nished entirely at the beginning. This is very seldom 
the case to-day. With the cutting down of the length 
of introductory paragraphs has come increasing em- 
phasis on the occasional touches of description. In- 
stead of one fixed landscape, we have many glimpses, 
just as in real life. A writer who enjoys picture 
effects may still indulge his taste if he makes quick 
and fleeting pictures. That considerable descrip- 
tion may be successfully introduced into the short- 
story may be seen from a study of James W. Linn's 
"The Girl at Duke's." 1 

" Duke's slept in the hot sun. . . . The rail- 
road, toiling over the ruddy desert, crosses a little 
empty run, which in some seasons holds water from 
heaven knows where ; and at the crossing stands, or 
crouches, Duke's. Rose-red hills, clasping in their 
jealous hearts the secret of fertility, some day to be 
delivered up at the touch of the Genius — rose-red, 
sun-smitten, dusty, treeless, grassless, waterhills 
roll and roll endlessly away from Duke's, lonely and 
bare as in the ages before history began; bisected 
by the two gleaming steel rails, seeming inhuman 
somehow, savage as the cacti, and no more a part 
of civilization than the flickering, quivering, sun- 
devils are which dance hour after hour above them 

1 McClure's, August, 1903. 



THE SETTING 159 

to the monotonous fiddling of Phaeton in his fiery 
chariot. Duke's is a tank, a platform, a little wooden 
shanty, and a name." 

So much for introduction. The scenery then grows 
into the story, appearing at intervals through its in- 
timate relation to the mood of the chief characters. 

"She looked about her, and saw her trunk some 
rods from her. Farther off, the line of dying green 
showed where the creek had been. A lizard ran 
along the edge of the platform, and, perceiving her, 
made an odd little noise in its throat, like the snap- 
ping of a match-box. Otherwise, there was no sign 
of life anywhere. Half an hour passed; an hour. 
Her uncle was long in coming! The shade of the 
tiny station shifted lazily over the hot boards. She 
made an effort to draw her trunk within it, for she 
was tired of standing, but, though she flushed and 
panted in her endeavor, she was unsuccessful. 
Another half-hour passed. Her eyes were weary 
with gazing across the glowing slopes, and her brain 
ached with waiting. Off in the distance a bird lazily 
sailed, and she followed its flight aimlessly. A red 
rock looming upon a hill, a rock of sandstone carved 
and machicolated by the centuries, confronted her, 
and she stared at it till presently it glared and 
blurred, for she was crying." 

And, again, in the course of the story: — 



160 THE SHORT-STORY 

"She went to the window and looked out, and the 
sight drew her, in spite of herself, into the open. 
She was in the emerald heart of a world of coral- 
pink. Softer than scarlet, more glowing than pink, 
the earth lay suffused, tinted like the embers of a 
dying fire. Gradually the plains became one rose; 
deep purple lowered in the sky, orange and gold and 
pearl; yet still the marvel and the richness of the 
rose claimed them and won them all, won them 
into its heart. Dorothy watched it ; and for long 
minutes there was no change, no diminution of 
its irresistible splendor ; the beauty was flaunted 
unendurably, as if God would forgive the world 
no jot of abasement before his terrible glory. Then 
slowly a gray veil began to film the heavens ; for a 
moment, as the rose faded, the bright colors gleamed 
and displayed themselves again in bands and streaks 
and burning, prismatic spots; then, suddenly, 
as if the fire were dead, the wind blew the embers 
black, and night fell." Yet again, the landscape 
takes on a different aspect, in the drive toward the 
station, an aspect distinctly traceable to the mood of 
the girl through whose eyes we are led to view it. If 
any justification were needed for the large use made 
of description here, it might be pointed out that the 
story makes its impression through the vivid picturing 
of a situation unique in its unconventionally, and 



THE SETTING 161 

that the natural setting is the essential background to 
this picture. Obvious enough also is the interpreta- 
tive value of these landscape passages for the devel- 
opment of the love motive (notably the contrast 
between the tone of the passage quoted just above 
and that of the introductory paragraph). But a 
simpler explanation of the acceptability of such 
descriptive passages is that, without in any way 
delaying the progress of the story, they add the 
element of beauty. 

Thus we see that, in a variety of ways, the setting 
may give breadth, depth, significance, and beauty 
to a story. But we must also see that, unless it is 
presented with taste and common sense, setting is 
a very doubtful element of literary value. Whether 
its purpose be to furnish bare facts which shall make 
possible the development of the plot, to introduce the 
characters, to transport the reader to another age 
and clime and another kind of life in order to charm 
by local interest; whether it be to add the ele- 
ment of beauty, to point a motive, or suggest a mood ; 
or, whether it be the simpler and more universal 
purpose to render the characters convincing by 
placing them in real surroundings, rather than in 
isolation, — it is to be remembered that setting is suc- 
cessful generally through its subordination to the 
particular purpose of the story. 



i6 2 THE SHORT-STORY 

THE SECTIONAL SHORT-STORY 

In America the realistic tendency of story-writers 
has manifested itself recently in a special depart- 
ment of literature — the sectional short-story. 1 The 
democratic spirit has given rise to an eager desire 
to know thoroughly man and his conditions. The 
result is a broader knowledge, a deeper sympathy, 
a solidifying of interests throughout the states. And 
these are the highest aims of the local story. 

Mark Twain and Bret Harte may be taken as 
representatives of the California slope; Hamlin 
Garland, of the Northwest; Gilbert Parker, of 
Canada; Hawthorne, Mary Wilkins Freeman, and 
Sarah Orne Jewett, of New England; James Lane 
Allen and John Fox, Jr., of Kentucky; Joel C. Har- 
ris and Julia Magruder, of Virginia ; Thomas Nelson 
Page, of Georgia; George W. Cable, Ruth Stuart, 
and Grace King, of Louisiana; and " Charles 
Craddock" of the Tennessee mountains. A careful 
study of the best stories of these writers is sufficient 
to convince one of the fact that, whether or not they 
shall be of permanent interest (Hawthorne's fame 

1 The place of the local or sectional short-story in the short-story 
literature of to-day would make an excellent topic for research. 
Abundant material may be drawn from the files of critical maga- 
zines for the last decade. 



THE SETTING 163 

has proved itself), they are filling a need to-day. 
And it is safe to predict that a number of the stories 
will survive, inasmuch as the local color is not made 
the whole or even the chief interest, but rather is 
so woven into the story that it seems essential to it. 
And the stories are of character, rather than of places 
or of customs. 



THE USE OF DIALECT IN THE SHORT-STORY 

The "local color" story has brought to something 
like mechanical perfection the device of dialect, or 
local language. Unfortunately, it has somewhat 
overdone the business, so as to call forth protests 
from the critics. Barrett, in his "Short-Story Writ- 
ing," practically annihilates the use of dialect — at 
least by amateurs. Bates's comment ("Talks on 
Writing English," p. 245) is almost as cutting: — 

"We are all familiar with a certain strange ap- 
pearance which has of late years come over the pages 
of the magazines, a sort of epidemic of which the 
most prominent characteristics are the misspelling 
of words and a plentiful scattering of apostrophes, 
as if the secret of literary art lay in eccentric and 
intermittent orthography." 

The aimless misspelling and corruption of speech 
can hardly be condemned too strongly. But the 



1 64 THE SHORT-STORY 

condemnation may not be made wholesale, in vir- 
tue of the excellence of such stories as those in Barrie's 
"A Window in Thrums," Cable's "Old Creole 
Days," and Kipling's tales of India. Here we see 
dialect at its best — as a device for individualizing 
character and at the same time suggesting the tone 
of the character's environment. 

The dialect stories which are written merely for 
the sake of exhibiting the eccentricities of a local 
language should be classed in didactic, rather than 
imaginative, literature. When dialect is used for 
its own sake, it is likely to be tiresome in the first 
reading and uninviting to a second. Difficult 
dialect should be used very sparingly, if at all. No 
dialect should be reproduced entire. The best 
American writers and most French writers use only 
enough of dialect to suggest the tone of speech. 
They remember that dialect is a flavor and not a 
substance, and avoid an overdose of it as they would 
the use of strong perfumes. 

If we agree that the function of dialect is to give 
coloring or atmosphere, rather than to portray 
actual peculiarities of speech or manner of thinking, 
we need not concern ourselves greatly over its abso- 
lute accuracy. This it can never attain. For 
dialect is almost entirely a matter of spoken words, 
depending on the quality of the voice, its rise and 



THE SETTING 165 

fall, its accent, its inflection. Of these English 
orthography cannot be tortured into adequate repre- 
sentation. Enunciation, slur, and modulation can- 
not be gotten into print. Possibly for this reason, 
we prefer to read a dialect not thoroughly familiar 
to us. Our critical faculties are lulled by ignorance, 
and we permit ourselves to be drawn by the lure into 
a new current of life in which we are content to drift. 
We then test dialect, as we should always do, by its 
consistency and plausibility, rather than by its pho- 
nographic accuracy. 

In historical romances, dialect is especially in 
danger of being overemphasized as a mere trick of 
the trade. Exclamations such as gadzooks, od's 
bodikins, gog's wounds, egad, and by the rood do not 
give historical setting, and a very few of them will 
be all the reader needs. 

That modern dialect has been made infinitely 
more plausible, more real, than the early dialect, may 
be made certain by a comparison of the use of dialect 
in the clever and interesting newsboy sketch, 
" Wanted: A Matchmaker," by Paul Ford, 1 with 
the local language in the eighteenth- century novel. 
Smollett gives us an occasional touch of crude dia- 
lect. And Defoe, in " Colonel Jacque," gives us a 
full dose. Defoe has suddenly broken away from 

1 Harper, September, 1900. 



1 66 THE SHORT-STORY 

his first person narrative to present an idea on the 
negro problem by a bit of dialogue : — 

"He shook his head and made signs that he 
was muchee sorree, as he called it. . . . 'Me will,' 
says he, 'run, go, fetch, bring for you as long as me 
live/ . . . 

"He looked very serious at me and said, 'Oh, that 
not so ; the masters say so, but no be~ so, no be so, 
indeede, indeede,' and so we parleyed. 

"Jacque. Why do they say so, then? To be sure, 
they have tried you all. 

"Negro. No, no, they no try: they say so, but no 
try. 

"Jacque. I hear them all say so. 

"Negro. Me tell you the true; they have no mer- 
cie; they beat us all cruel, all cruel; they never 
have show mercie. How can they tell we be no 
better? 

"Jacque. What! Do they never spare? 

"Negro. Master, me speakee the true; they 
never give mercie; they always whippee, lashee, 
knockee down, all cruel. Negro be muchee better 
man, do muchee better work, but they tell us no 
mercie. 

"Jacque. But what, do they never show any 
mercy ? 

"Negro. No, never; no, never; all whippee; 



THE SETTING 167 

all whippee; all whippee, cruel, worse than they 
whippee de horse, whippee de dog. 

"Jacque. But would they be better if they did? 

"Negro. Yes, yes, negro be muchee better if they 
be mercie. When they be whippee, whippee, negro 
muchee cry, muchee hate ; would kill if they had de 
gun. But when they makee de mercie, then negro 
tell de great tankee, and love to worke, and do 
muchee worke; and because he good master to 
them. 

"Jacque. They say no; you would laugh at them 
and mock when they show mercy. 

"Negro. How they say when they no show mercie ? 
They never show mercie ; me never see them show 
one mercie since me live." 

This dialect sounds like a conglomeration of Indian, 
Chinese, French, and negro; and, however it may 
have seemed in Defoe's day, it is not convincing now. 
Unconvincing dialogue is grotesque. Slightly ab- 
surd also is Thackeray's touch of dialect in "The 
Newcomes" where the Jew says, "Step id, Bister 
Doocob, ady day idto Vordor Street" — a catarrhal 
dialect to which the Gentile too is liable. 

After reading this inaccurate dialect, it is a relief 
to turn even to such a peculiar dialect as the New 
Mennonite, as treated by a painstaking writer cf 



168 THE SHORT-STORY 

our day, Helen Martin. 1 But no matter what tech- 
nical perfection dialect has attained, it must be 
treated as a device and not an end, a device likely 
to be of temporary and ephemeral interest unless 
it has acquired universal and permanent value 
through its contribution to that greatest source of 
literary interest — human character. 2 

1 Note the use of dialect in " The Betrothal of Elypholate 
Yingst," Cosmopolitan, June, 1903. 

2 The young student needs to be repeatedly cautioned that even 
in misspelling there are certain accepted standards which forbid 
faulty eliminations such as those in a bit of dialect taken from a 
student's theme, " Please, could you tell me whe'e the police 
headqua'ete's a'e ? " 



CHAPTER XI 

THE REALISTIC MOVEMENT 

It is with hesitation that one approaches this 
much discussed and variously interpreted question 
of the possibilities and the limitations of realism in 
fiction. If the subject were not so large, it would 
long ago have been worn threadbare. But it pre- 
sents itself in new guise every now and then, and 
is an ever present literary problem. The word 
realism has taken on a great variety of meanings, 
at least two of which must be clearly distinguished 
before there can be any profitable discussion. 

Realism has been carefully and elaborately de- 
fined by many writers. One of the broadest defini- 
tions is that of Ho wells, where he says, "Realism 
is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful 
treatment of material, and Jane Austen was the first 
and the last of the English novelists to treat material 
with entire truthfulness." * But, like all compre- 
hensive definitions, this is not altogether satisfying. 
Immediately the question arises, What constitutes 
truthjul treatment of material? And we find we 
have made little progress. Again, Ho wells says, 

1 ' Criticism and Fiction," p. 73. 
169 



170 THE SHORT-STORY 

with Emerson : "I ask not for the great, the remote, 
the romantic. ... I embrace the common; I sit 
at the feet of the familiar and the low." But here 
the realist joins hands with the human romanticist. 
Who has more enthusiastically embraced the com- 
mon and sat at the feet of the familiar and the low 
than the romantic poets, Burns and Wordsworth? 
It may be objected that their aim was the exalting 
of the humble and the low into the heroic and the 
romantic. But the great realist is in sympathy with 
this aim to some extent. For that there is genuine 
worth in the humble and the lowly theme has long 
been a favorite bone of contention with him. And 
the strictest realists would hardly contend that either 
Burns or Wordsworth has falsified his material to 
point a moral, or has shorn it of its native simplicity 
and truth. This only goes to show that, although 
the term realism is commonly interpreted as being 
opposed to romance, on the one hand, and to idealism, 
on the other, it cannot be definitely distinguished 
from them once for all, nor can it be set over into 
complete opposition to them. For we shall see that 
the best realism has something of idealism in it, and 
that it employs many of the same literary methods as 
romance. For spiritual meaning can be shown 
within the real; and the boundary line between 
remembered fact and fancy is a shadowy one, at 



THE REALISTIC MOVEMENT 171 

best. We cannot label any splendid work of fiction 
romantic or realistic or even idealistic ; for it has in 
it something of all these attributes. It is only a 
question of proportion. So let us see on what ele- 
ments the realists lay stress. 

Zola, in his "Le Roman Experimental," defines 
realism as the "negation of fancy" (including the 
romantic and the rhetorical) ; as the " exclusion of the 
ideal" — that is, of all not firmly based on the actual 
life of human beings ; and, as the omission of all that 
is grotesque, unreal, nebulous, or didactic. Realism," 
he says, is contemporary, founded on and limited by 
actual experience. In dealing with men, the realist 
"trusts to principles of action, rejecting formulas of 
character." In spirit he is "analytical, not lyrical, 
painting men as they are." Zola excludes, then, 
from the world of fiction romance, fantasy, the hidden 
spiritual truth, the interpretation of human character 
and human life — in a word, the personal point 0} 
view. And quite as significant is his inclusion of all 
experienced fact as literary material. It is this 
phase of realism that has led to the endless contro- 
versy between the idealists and the realists, waged 
now on aesthetic and now on moral grounds. How- 
ells says: "Nothing that God has made is contemp- 
tible. He (the realist) cannot look upon human life 
and declare this thing or that thing unworthy of 



172 THE SHORT-STORY 

notice, any more than the scientist can declare a fact 
of the material world beneath the dignity of his 
inquiry. He feels in every nerve the equality of 
things and the unity of men ; his soul is exalted, not 
by vain shows and shadows and ideals, but by 
realities, in which alone the truth lives." It is this 
view of literature that is responsible for the dull, 
commonplace, prosaic, trifling, petty fiction which 
gives as its only excuse for existence the fact that it 
has its counterpart in the dull, prosaic, trifling 
pettinesses of our daily life — that it is uncompro- 
misingly, deplorably true to the most worthless 
features of our life. 1 

Our modern realists have vied with the scientists 
in exploring the minutiae of life with a painstaking 
zeal worthy of a better cause. But when a scien- 
tific writer of intelligence can devote a chapter to 
"Parental Affection, as seen in the Earwig," what 
shall we expect of the literary man who follows such 
false leads? The constant use of the microscope is 
very likely to disturb proportions. And it is still a 
live question whether any art can long survive the 
application to it of scientific aims and scientific 
standards. The true artist is likely to go on pro- 
testing, as he has done through the ages, that there is 

1 An amusing realistic transcript from a man's daily life is 
made by Winchester, " Principles of Literary Criticism," p. 162, 



THE REALISTIC MOVEMENT 173 

no such divine equality of things, that art " values" 
of all kinds and degrees exist in our experience. The 
right of selection is exercised by the realist as well as 
by the idealist ; only the realist seeks out by prefer-" 
ence the small, the common, and the normal. These 
are to him the only real. And, if shadows and 
ideals are non-existent to the realist — if he truly 
does find comfort in confining himself within the 
narrow limits of his own actual experience, there is 
no reason why he should not be allowed to occupy 
this small literary compartment in peace — only 
provided that he does not crowd out his neighbors 
from their compartments. It has been genuinely 
amusing to observe the sweet complacency with 
which the narrower type of realist congratulates 
himself that he has not only the front room or the 
top story, but the whole edifice. One distinguished 
realist of our day remarks, "It is saying very little 
to say that I value more such a novel as Mr. James's 
'The Tragic Muse' than all the romantic attempts 
since Hawthorne." But the general reading public 
has not yet been educated out of its childish prefer- 
ence for a plot. Again, our critic says, "The art 
of fiction, as Jane Austen knew it, declined from her 
through Scott, and Bulwer, and Dickens, and Char- 
lotte Bronte, and Thackeray, and even George Eliot." 1 

1 " Criticism and Fiction," p. 73. 



174 THE SHORT-STORY 

While this is, beyond doubt, a thoroughly sincere 
appreciation, one who was not familiar with Ho wells 's 
admiration for the " divine Jane" would be tempted 
to regard this as literary criticism put in blinkers. 
It would indeed be unfortunate for the cause of 
realism if all the critics should agree that the narrow 
world, the somewhat tame, though exquisite minia- 
ture work, and the small emotional power of "Pride 
and Prejudice" and "Mansfield Park" were worth 
more to the reading world than the broad circle, the 
strong and vivid characterization, the richness and 
fulness, the intense emotional power of "Vanity 
Fair" and "The Newcomes." Thackeray is such a 
big realist that he is also a romanticist and idealist ; 
and, whatever category you put him under, he sticks 
out around the edges. Therefore he must be shut 
out from the elect of realism, forsooth, or accept a 
humble place at the tail end of the downward grade 
from the summit of Jane Austen! (But then, he 
has George Eliot to keep him company.) Thacke- 
ray's practice hints at some such creed as Maurice 
Thompson's : * — 

"No true art is ever a parasite, nor ever a forced 
growth, taking color or quality under the touch of 
self-conscious manipulators, who model by alien 
standards of ethical and aesthetical limitations." 

1 " Domain of Romance," Forum, v. 8. 



THE REALISTIC MOVEMENT 175 

Realism is not new in literature ; it has only grown 
some new excrescences. Realism and romance sprang 
up in fiction about the same time; and they have 
flourished ever since by turns or side by side. The 
critics have had something to do with their succes- 
sion; but the age and the people have had a great 
deal more. The literary pendulum has swung some- 
what regularly back and forth, in accordance with 
the impulse of the spirit of the age. And when men's 
interests suffer a reaction, as they are bound to do 
on reaching the extremity of any literary method, 
all the critics can do is to hang on and be carried 
with the pendulum or stand back and watch it go. 

But the influence of realism on literary methods has 
been vast and, in most respects, beneficent. The 
realistic writer insists on the illusion of truth, giving 
value to the specific, the minute. The attention to 
the choice of exquisitely suggestive details, the "small, 
familiar touch, making one see," has made itself 
felt in all literature, even the most romantic. For 
this is, after all, a question of technique. Swift, 
Defoe, and Poe, daring romancers every one, have 
the concreteness, the vivid illusion of truth that is the 
result of realistic methods. It is only to be regretted 
that some realists have lost themselves in a maze of 
hopelessly insignificant details, and that they have 
become incapable of the larger vision. 



176 THE SHORT-STORY 

Again, in opening up the everyday world, the 
ground of the common and the lowly, as literary 
domain, realism has done a vast service to fiction in 
general and to the short-story in particular" v ^The 
little stories of real life so deservedly popular to-day 
have frequently a noble aim closely akin to that of 
the great romantic movement that stirred the literary 
world to its depths in the early part of the nineteenth 
century. Everyday life and normal human char- 
acter abound in minor themes admirably adapted 
to the scope of the short-story. 

But, in its abnormal phases, realism has seemed 
to delight in the vulgar and the low for its own sake. 
Now the vulgar and the low have in themselves no 
literary value, and they cannot be given any without 
the aid of interpretation. Just here the realists are 
a little shaky.}. Ho wells says that the realist "is 
careful of every fact, and feels himself bound to 
express or to indicate its meaning at the risk of 
overmoralizing. In life he finds nothing insignifi- 
cant; all tells for destiny and character." * Yet he 
goes on to criticise Balzac for his interpretation of 
characters and for not letting them speak for them- 
selves. And Zola forbids all interpretation. The 
truth is, realists differ widely on this point, both in 
theory and in practice. The French seem to have 

1 " Criticism and Fiction," p. 15. 



THE REALISTIC MOVEMENT 177 

acquired the knack of detaching their ethical point 
of view, as they would lay aside a pair of spectacles, 
so that they can portray any and every part of a by 
no means narrow or sequestered life with the same 
fidelity that distinguished the virtuous Jane Austen, 
but with very different results. The spirit of Field- 
ing animates the grosser "naturalists" to-day. It is 
literary barbarism, naked and unashamed. 

This grosser phase of realism has no application 
whatever to short-story art. Vlts only excuse is, that 
it endeavors to portray the whole of life and can- 
not in truth omit the gross. The short-story makes 
no such claims ;>< and the repeated choice of such 
material here would pretty clearly indicate the 
author's taste for the vulgar and the immoral in 
preference to the pure and the good. The limitation 
of the aim and scope of the modern short-story has 
therefore saved it from the mire of naturalism. 

Shunning the gross and indecent, the extremists in 
America have taken up the "problem" fiction, a 
comparatively innocent branch of realistic natural- 
ism. Here we have interpretation with a vengeance 
and analysis run riot. Possibly the authors of the 
realistic psychological novels think they are analyzing 
impartially and scientifically, but the unenlightened 
one feels that he has run up against an Individual 
Point of View. Pure realism, as Zola defines it, is 



178 THE SHORT-STORY 

a practical impossibility in fiction, inasmuch as it 
does away with the individual point of view. The 
universal elements of our experience contribute to 
the sum of our knowledge; but they can never' con- 
tribute to our literature until they have added to 
them the personal element. The author is bound to 
interpret, else literature were as soulless as a photo- 
graph. He cannot escape interpretation; for it is 
only because experience means something to him 
that he cares to extend and make it permanent by 
giving it literary expression. 

Moreover, there is no such thing as absolute truth 
to experience in fiction. Omit one detail, select 
another ; slur one and emphasize another, — have 
you falsified? If so, you may have done it in the 
interest of a higher truth than that of fact — the 
imaginative truth of consistency — in accordance 
with the aim or purpose of your portrait. It must 
be remembered that the whole reality is not given 
without the relation of a particular bit of expe- 
rience to the past and to the? future and to those 
immediately connected with the characters chiefly 
concerned. This, too, requires interpretation. 

Now, if the novel cannot get along without inter- 
pretation, the short-story is still more dependent on 
it. It has, as was said before, no aim to portray 
the whole of life impartially; instead, it aims to 



THE REALISTIC MOVEMENT 179 

present and to interpret a single phase of life. It is 
nothing without a point. The short-story may be 
as simple and as homely as you will, it may be 
minute and accurate in detail, it can even survive 
the lack of romance and high idealism ; but it can- 
not do without interpretation and the personal point 
of view. \jThe short-story takes the best of realism, 
the best of romance, the best of idealism, and makes 
them all its own. m It endeavors to express, in the 
concrete form of a vivid picture of life, the under- 
lying laws of human nature that govern our affec- 
tions, our passions, our conduct — that determine our 
character and our relations to one another. And it 
is this aim at fundamental truths in concrete form, 
rather than the technique by which it works, that 
is the all-important. ,\ 



CHAPTER XII 

THE ELEMENT OF FANTASY 

The term romance has taken on such a variety of 
meanings that the word fantasy is here selected to 
include a portion of what is generally included under 
the romantic and something more — the weird, the 
supernatural, the mysterious, and the unexplained. 
Maurice Thompson, in his article on "The Domain 
of Romance" (Forum, 8 : 328), says that "the differ- 
ence between realism and romance seems to be the re- 
mainder left over when delineation is subtracted from 
interpretation." If so, every good short-story must 
include something of romance. But a commoner 
interpretation of the term seems to include an ele- 
ment of remoteness of place or time ; or an element 
of the abnormal or unusual in experience, of the 
frankly impossible; or the element of the super- 
natural, including the weird or the uncanny, and 
the simple but intangible spiritual truths. 

All these lines of interest the stricter realist would 

bar out from fiction. Critics have said, from time 

to time, There shall be no more romance. But even 

then the chariot of romance was whirling inevitably 

180 



THE ELEMENT OF FANTASY 181 

by, no more to be checked by the voice of a critic 
than by the barking of a dog. We have an out- 
stripping curiosity, a winged imagination, and "an 
insatiable desire to know what is on the other side of 
the wall." * And, as long as man has an imagina- 
tion and a soul, there will be fantasy in literature. 
You may thrust it out and bolt the door, but it will 
slip in through the keyhole and present itself to every 
sensitive temperament, a living and all but tangible 
reality. 

Our taste for wonder is probably elemental and 
primitive. If it were not deep-rooted, the scientists 
would have explained it away with a microscope a 
century ago. Howells ingeniously explains it down 
to a "lapse back into savagery and barbarism." 2 
He does not blame us for these inevitable moods, 
which he describes as "innocent debauches" and 
places on a par with the circus and negro minstrelsy. 
Hawthorne delighted in these innocent debauches. 
Let us follow him through one of them, in order 
thoroughly to appreciate the fantastic mood 
indulging itself at length : 3 — 

(i Salem, Mar. 12, 1843. — That poor home! 
How desolate it is now! Last night, being awake, 

George Fenn, "The Art of Mystery in Fiction," North 
American, 156 : 432. 2 " Criticism and Fiction," p. 109. 

8 "American Note Book," 2: 115. 



i8 2 THE SHORT-STORY 

. . . my thoughts travelled back to the lonely old 
Manse; and it seemed as if I were wandering up- 
stairs and downstairs all by myself. My fancy was 
almost afraid to be there alone. I could see every 
object in a dim, gray light, — our chamber, the study, 
all in confusion; the parlor, with the fragments of 
that abortive breakfast on the table, and the pre- 
cious silver forks, and the old bronze image, keeping 
its solitary stand upon the mantel-piece. Then, 
methought, the wretched Vigwiggie came, and 
jumped upon the window-sill, and clung there with 
her forepaws, mewing dismally for admittance, 
which I could not grant her, being there myself only 
in the spirit. And then came the ghost of the old 
Doctor, stalking through the gallery, and down the 
staircase, and peeping into the parlor; and though 
I was wide awake and conscious of being many miles 
from the spot, still it was quite awful to think of the 
ghost having sole possession of our home; for I 
could not quite separate myself from it, after all. 
Somehow the Doctor and I seemed to be there 
tete-a-tete. ... I believe I did not have any fan- 
tasies about the ghostly kitchen-maid; but I trust 
Mary left her flat-irons within her reach, so that she 
may do all her ironing while we are away, and never 
disturb us more at midnight. I suppose she comes 
hither to iron her shroud, and perhaps, likewise, 



THE ELEMENT OF FANTASY 183 

to smooth the Doctor's band. Probably during her 
lifetime, she allowed him to go to some ordination or 
other grand clerical celebration with rumpled linen; 
and ever since, and throughout all earthly futurity 
(at least, as long as the house shall stand), she is 
doomed to exercise a nightly toil with a spiritual 
flat-iron. Poor sinner ! — and doubtless Satan heats 
the irons for her. What nonsense is all this ! But, 
really, it does make me shiver to think of that poor 
home of ours." 

Surely an innocent recreation this ! The particular 
fantastic mood here indulged is not of value for the 
rest of us save as it may have trained Hawthorne's 
imagination to higher and surer flights. But if you 
should rob Hawthorne of his fantasy, you would 
take away one of the most original and precious bits 
of genius America has yet produced. Poe robbed 
of fantasy would be healthier, perhaps, but not a 
genius ; and Irving without a touch of fantasy would 
be dull, to say the least. Fantasy, more than any 
other single element, is characteristic of the tem- 
peramental moods of that great trio of American 
writers who established the short-story as a special 
literary form. Among English writers, Kipling and 
Stevenson excel in the use of fantasy (Kipling being 
rather finer and more subtile, as well as more auda- 
cious). And the best German and French short- 



184 THE SHORT-STORY 

story writers also make free use of fantasy — in- 
deed, in one form or another, it may be said to be 
almost essential for the production of a variety of 
original story motives and story situations. 

A comparison of Irving and Poe and Hawthorne 
will show three distinct types of fantasy character- 
istic of the temperament and the genius of each. 
Irving is genuinely human, and his fantasy is warm 
and sunny, however exaggerated it may be. 

Poe is to be studied for marvels and wonders and 
horrors. The Spanish critic, Landa, says that Poe 
"has been the first story- writer to exploit the field of 
science in the department of the marvellous . . . 
and first to exploit the marvellous in morbid psy- 
chology with scientific art." Poe's is a peculiar 
literary gift — that of vivid portrayal, stamping an 
impression almost instantaneously. He had a genius 
for suggestive and convincing detail. As Lowell 
says, he "does not leave a pin or a button unnoticed." 
But this very fidelity to detail sets off and intensifies 
the mystery. Morbid his fantasy is, beyond ques- 
tion; yet, even without taking into account the un- 
derlying mental disease, it is great fantasy — daring, 
original, and of compelling interest. George Fenn, 
in the article quoted on the use of mystery, compares 
the reading of a mystery story to the experience of 
being sucked into a whirlpool and drawn round and 



THE ELEMENT OF FANTASY 185 

round to the inevitable centre. Every one who reads 
Poe must have gone through some such experience. 
One may say he prefers a sweeter, sunnier fantasy ; 
but he goes on reading, just the same. Poe's 
brain had a "rift of ruin" in it from the start — a 
rift which only widened with experience. Passion- 
ately fond of beauty, he conceived the melancholy 
idea that beauty and grace are interesting only in 
their overthrow. "I have imbibed," he says, "the 
shadows of fallen columns at Balbec, and Tadmor, 
and Persepolis, until my very soul has become a 
ruin." And his stories have the romantic interest 
of glimpses of splendid ruins. 

In comparison with Poe's, Hawthorne's fantasy, 
even where it treats a morbid theme, is natural and 
wholesome. Like Poe, he freely violates the laws 
of fact, but he very rarely violates those of nature — 
never those of human nature. Hawthorne had an 
insight into the sane and the insane; but he kept a 
perfect balance between the two. "His mood was 
romantic; his habitual atmosphere that of dusky 
dawns and twilights, sylvan solitudes and moonlit 
landscapes. He could not endure the clear, sharp 
light of high noon. . . . His romantic temperament 
is seen in the choice and treatment of his themes, 
as well as in the background against which he sets 
his pictures of life and the atmosphere he throws 



186 THE SHORT-STORY 

about them. His art deals fundamentally with the 
haunting mysteries of the human soul. His mind is 
fascinated with the secret workings of conscience, the 
effects of crime upon the perpetrator ; subtle, pecul- 
iar, and" sometimes morbid problems of conduct; 
and the secret, vagrant, unspoken impulses and pas- 
sions that, for good or evil, ruffle the bosoms of stain- 
less maid and hardened .criminal alike." * Yet 
Hawthorne employed the morbid and mysterious 
with the uniform purpose of illustrating in the con- 
crete certain natural laws and spiritual truths, 
thereby fulfilling one of the truest definitions of ro- 
mance — "the exhibition of familiar motive in un- 
familiar circumstance." 2 

In the story of fantasy, the young writer will be 
likely to experience some difficulty at the first ; but 
the training it will afford his imagination is worth 
the while, even if the early products should prove 
crude or startling, and be unworthy of the name of 
literature. There is a boundless field of subjects 
here, and a chance for absolute originality of treat- 
ment. And, if the student will steep himself in the 
atmosphere of Poe, Hawthorne, and Kipling, he 
will come to avoid instinctively the worst violations 
of literary standards. 

1 F. C. Lockwood, " Hawthorne as a Literary Artist," Meth- 
odist Review, September-October, 1904. 

2 Winchester, " Principles of Literary Criticism." 



THE ELEMENT OF FANTASY 187 

Note. — Brander Matthews's "The Philosophy of the Short- 
Story" contains an interesting chapter comparing Poe's and Haw- 
thorne's use of fantasy. 

Note. — The "mystery" story proper may be roughly divided 
into two classes, that mystery which is wholly or partly solved, and 
that which leaves with the reader a vivid expression of the unseen 
and supernatural forces. The superior impressionistic power of the 
latter class may be seen by comparing such stories as Kipling's " At 
the End of the Passage " and Fitz- James O'Brien's " What Was 
It? A Mystery " with the solved " Ghost Story," a fair represen- 
tative of the former class. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 

A story cannot claim rank as literature unless it 
have in it the power to evoke in the sympathetic 
reader some stirring of emotion. But, essential as 
is the feeling tone of a story, it is an element which 
submits itself with difficulty to analysis. And the 
young writer whose work lacks emotional power can 
do little more than trust to time to broaden and 
deepen his emotional experiences. If he has eyes 
to see, mind to judge, and heart to feel the human life 
about him, emotions will arise in him spontaneously. 
They cannot be prematurely forced. 

It was the attempt to force the emotional element 
into fiction that brought about that tremendous 
amateurish blunder of sentimentalism in eighteenth- 
century fiction. Winchester says, in his " Principles 
of Literary Criticism": "All forms of sentimen- 
talism in literature result from the endeavor to 
excite the emotions of pathos or affection without 
adequate cause. Emotions thus easily aroused or 
consciously indulged for their own sake, have some- 
thing hollow about them. The emotion excited by 



THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 189 

the true artist is grounded upon the deep truths of 
human life. It springs from a great and worthy 
cause, and is necessarily infrequent in occurrence." 

I. The Love Element 

The more expansive form of the novel has always 
been better adapted to the purpose of the sentimen- 
talist; but the brevity of the short-story has not 
made it thoroughly immune to the disease. It is 
especially in the love story that the symptoms of 
sentimentalism appear. It is not extreme to say 
that if one were to read, with an exercise of sym- 
pathy, half of the great mass of ordinary and com- 
monplace love stories which appear in the average 
magazine, — stories with nothing unique in character, 
in situation, in the quality or the results of the affec- 
tion, — he would perforce become a sentimentalist 
through the repeated irritation of his emotions along 
the same channel without adequate cause in the en- 
listment of his interest in an unusual situation or a 
vividly realized character. The magazine editors 
claim that the reading public demands the love ele- 
ment in the short-story. This is doubtless partly 
true; but it is an open question whether, if more 
high-grade magazines should admit stories not con- 
fined to the presentation of young love between the 



i 9 o THE SHORT-STORY 

sexes, the character of the magazine-reading public 
would not undergo a striking change. Many ma- 
ture and experienced thinkers seem to be ashamed 
to be caught reading a magazine of fiction, and to 
feel called upon to explain their offence, as if the 
onlookers would necessarily condemn them as weakly 
sentimental. 

There would seem to be no valid reason why the 
popular magazine should set its standards wholly 
by the tastes and inclinations of the immature read- 
ers at a single stage of their development. That 
the romantic period of youth is very often of impor- 
tance to the life of the individual, that the majority 
of people do pass through it, and that those who are 
passing through it experience a morbid craving for 
sentimental stimulation, are facts not to be denied. 
But, on the other hand, it is to be remembered that, 
however normal and universal it may be, the young 
love of the conventional, romantic type is at best a 
fleeting passion; that it is generally limited in its 
influence (if it proves to have any influence at all) 
to the two characters chiefly concerned; and that 
generally, when these have entered upon the real 
business of living, they tuck it away in a remote cor- 
ner of memory seldom overhauled. Perhaps they 
will feel a faint stirring of the old emotion when the 
live wires of memory are again excited. The faded 



THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 191 

flower is there, but the ineffable fragrance is forever 
gone. It is a rare soul that can revive the spirit of 
young love, when once it has slipped away. These 
are some of the reasons why the mature reader will 
not find the same fulness of joy in a commonplace 
love story as does the young person when he is most 
susceptible. And it is to be hoped that more and 
more magazines will so broaden the range of their 
themes that the sentimental love story will take 
something like its true rank in accordance with its 
actual value in determining human character and 
its actual place in the whole of human life. That it 
is at present vastly exaggerated, and at times greatly 
falsified, no one who reads many magazines can 
doubt. Some young people can and do love deeply 
and nobly ; but the mass of evidence gathered from 
magazine fiction declares a passion cheap, common, 
shallow, appetitive, weakly sentimental, or ephem- 
eral. Until this phase of adolescent passion is rele- 
gated to its proper place in the category of human 
emotions, the deeper and saner emotions of mature 
love, affection, and kindliness that prompt to lives of 
duty, of benevolence and charity, of purity and con- 
stancy, of heroism, possibly of tragic sacrifice, cannot 
be set upon their proper pinnacle. And, until they 
are so placed, the love story is in danger of remain- 
ing under the ban for many a serious-minded reader. 



192 THE SHORT-STORY 

Is the love element essential to the success of the 
short-story? Brander Matthews says, "Of course 
he (the short-story writer) may tell a tale of love if 
he chooses, and if love enters naturally into his tale 
and to its enriching ; but he need not bother with love 
at all unless he please. 1 Some of the best of short- 
stories are love stories too (' Marjorie Daw'); but 
more of them are not love stories at all. If we 
were to pick out the ten best short-stories, I think 
we should find that fewer than half of them made 
any mention of the love of man for woman (the 
chief topic of the novel). . . . The short-story, be- 
ing brief, does not need the love element to hold 
its parts together." The statement is the more 
striking in view of the fact that possibly nine-tenths 
of our fiction has early love for its main theme. But 
it is very true that, while we have so many read- 
able short-stories of love, those which may be called 
great are very few. 

In view of the facts that love is a normal — we 
might almost say a universal — passion ; that, if genu- 
ine, it does influence the life of giver and receiver; 
that, if noble, it strengthens or beautifies the charac- 
ter, and, if ignoble, undermines integrity, — it would 
seem that there are possibilities in this theme which 
are not yet fully realized in this shorter form of fiction. 

1 Italics mine. 



THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 193 

It may be maintained that the short-story does not 
need the love element to give it unity of plot and 
tone, as does the novel. But the love element has 
real value for the short-story in its transfiguring of 
character. The full course of love cannot well be 
compassed by the. short-story: but many a phase of 
love can be successfully isolated. A character in 
love is in the process of becoming; and the deter- 
mination of character is perennially interesting. It 
is in the heightening of the forces that go to char- 
acter formation that love offers a promising field 
to the story-writer. A good love story, too, gives 
us a " vital feeling of delight" because it has in it 
joy and strength. There is nothing in the form or 
the scope of the short-story which should tend against 
the successful treatment of this theme. On the con- 
trary, its brevity and compression contribute to the 
beneficent emotional effect of these tonic doses of 
delight. And yet the fact remains that love is the 
most used and worst abused of all the emotional 
elements of short-story literature. * 

Not only the critics, but some writers of fiction, 
believe that the passion of young love is a subject 
best omitted. The Italian novelist, Manzoni, when 
asked why he had cut out all the love scenes from his 
novels, answered : — 

" Because I am of the opinion that one must not 
o 



i 9 4 THE SHORT-STORY 

speak of love in a way to lead others to that passion. 
... I believe that love is necessary in this world, 
but also that there will always be a sufficient amount 
of it; we need not therefore take the pains of cul- 
tivating it in others, for in cultivating it one helps 
only to arouse it where it is not wanted. There are 
other sentiments which the world is in more need 
of and that a writer may, according to his ability, 
spread somewhat more in the hearts of men, such as 
pity, love of mankind, a kindly disposition, merci- 
fulness, and self-denial. These sentiments cannot 
be too numerous, and all praise to the writers who 
attempt to increase their strength among men. But 
what we call love, I think that I figure very moder- 
ately when I say that there is six hundred times 
more of it than is necessary for the preservation of 
our honorable species. ... I am so convinced of 
this that if by a miracle, some day, I should be in- 
spired with the most eloquent love-pages that man 
has ever written, I should not even take pen to jot 
them on paper, so certain am I that I should regret 
it." This is the view of an extremist, but it has a 
sound kernel of meaning. The physical aspect of 
love is not valuable for fiction unless it is employed in 
the interests of a higher purpose (as, for example, in 
picturing a moral tragedy, to show the results on 
character). And we do need to emphasize not only 



THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 195 

other phases of the sentiment, but other sentiments 
than love. 

The realistic tendency in modern fiction is largely 
responsible for the treatment of the irregular and 
unlawful passion of love, its conflict with the moral 
or social laws. Such love has the strength of un- 
trained force. It may carry with it jealousy and 
infidelity, anger, sorrow, or despair ; and it generally 
does involve catastrophe of some sort. As mature 
love and morbid love are at the same time greater 
and more perilous than conventional young love in 
real life, so they must be handled with much more 
care in fiction. The irregularity of love must not 
be mere eroticism, nor should it be so presented as 
to glorify lawlessness and revolt and to set up the 
morbid and abnormal above the natural and healthy. 
Within the limits of good taste and purity of purpose, 
the theme offers legitimate material for working out 
the strong tragic possibilities of a character. The 
point to be remembered is, that these emotions have 
no existence of their own and that they can be ex- 
perienced and expressed only through their relation 
to character and conduct. 

Some practical suggestions may be of value to the 
beginner who handles the love theme. 

1. Do not believe that the introduction of the love 



196 THE SHORT-STORY 

element does away with the necessity of logical and 
plausible plot construction. Love will have its own 
way, of course, but it should not be made to scale 
mountains of improbability. Although marrying the 
hero and the heroine is a comfortable way of making 
a final (?) disposal of them, there really ought to be 
some valid reason for their marrying. In a little 
article on "Why they Marry" in a recent number of 
Munsey's, the following reasons are enumerated : — 
"The hero, in pursuit of an eloping brother, 
meets the heroine, in pursuit of an eloping sister; 
they promptly abandon the pursuit and elope them- 
selves. 1 . . . Again, the hero is the one man whom 
the heroine will not marry; but they are off on a 
tally-ho together and he shows that he can han- 
dle the reins at a critical moment ; so she marries 
him as a matter of course. Yet another hero insists 
upon wedding the girl who tries to defeat the passage 
of his bill in the Legislature; another, the damsel 
who seems to have cheated him out of a street-car 
fare. They marry to beguile the tedium of a trans- 
continental railway trip; they marry to provide 
themselves with pleasant companionship for a Euro- 
pean tour ; they marry to atone for rudeness and to 
pay bets ; they marry for adventure, and they marry 

1 Probably a reference to Chambers's <! A Young Man in a 
Hurry," Harper's, August, 1903. 



THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 197 

for fun." The desire to bring the course of love to the 
old-time goal of matrimony, regardless of obstruc- 
tions, causes many a writer to sin against all the laws 
of probability. If they must be driven to the altar, 
fictitious characters should be made to marry 
plausibly. 

2. Since the theme of love is common, the love 
story needs something unique (this does not mean 
sensational or eccentric) in the situation, or some- 
thing fresh in characterization, or in the quality of 
affection. Rob's proposal to Julia in Hamlin Gar- 
land's " Among the Corn-Rows" is simple enough, 
but the situation is unique. 

3. The declaration of love is not necessarily the 
real crisis in its course. The earlier period of the 
dawning of love and the later one of the adjusting 
of the claims of love to the other claims of life are 
quite as important and, in most cases, considerably 
more interesting to outsiders. The choice of either 
of these periods will furnish a means of escape from 
the conventional proposal scene — generally the 
weakest instead of the strongest point of a love story. 

4. If it becomes necessary to picture a love scene, 
rely largely on suggestion. Do not elaborate the 
love-making. Give only samples of the conversation, 
and a modicum of endearment. In short, do not drag 
an alcove scene into the broad glare of the footlights. 



198 THE SHORT-STORY 

Be reserved. Avoid lushness .of sentimentality. 
Let the sentiment be strong and genuine, but never 
over-ripe. 

5. Begin far along in the story. 

6. Do not carry the story too far. That con- 
clusion of a love story is most effective where most 
is left to the imagination. 

7. Do not balk at first sight of an emotional climax. 
If you have undertaken to write on the theme of 
love, do not shirk the real task, as was done by a 
student in this passage : — 

"To fill in the many awkward pauses, they sur- 
veyed some large globes filled with wax flowers. 
At last he told her that they had been keeping 
company with one another for a long time, and that 
he wished her to be his wife." 

8. Having struck an emotional key, do not tone 
down at the close. 

And if the way seems hedged about with these 
restrictions, choose another motive for the predomi- 
nating one. For, if this highest and finest of emo- 
tions cannot be presented worthily, it were better left 
untouched. 

II. Pathos and Tragedy 

The quality of pathos in literature may be very 
simply defined as that which arouses a pleasurable 



THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 199 

activity of sympathetic pity. And pity has been 
defined by Addison as "love softened by a degree of 
sorrow." As such, pity is almost a universal 
emotion, though very different in its manifestations. 
The psychologist James Sully calls it "a wave of 
tender emotion which is in certain persons excited 
by the perception (or imagination) of another's dis- 
tress." He goes on to say that pity must be allowed 
to be one of the greatest sources of human delight. 1 
The seeming paradox, that the sight of another's 
distress should cause delight, is not hard to explain. 
The "delight" is caused not at all by the thought of 
another's suffering, but by the reader's generous 
response of sympathetic feeling, a response which 
would in real life normally go over into benevolent 
action. Pathetic stories with their "sad twilight 
pleasure" of sympathetic sorrow are thus to be 
classed among the greatest sources of humanitarian 
impulses, binding men together by a sense of uni- 
versal brotherhood. Real pathos levels all dis- 
tinctions and establishes a genuine democracy of 
feeling. 

Moreover, sorrow and distress are intimately con- 
nected with development of character. It is not as 
isolated emotions that they furnish valuable literary 
material, but in their relation to the heroic virtues 

1 " The Luxury of Pity," Forum, v. 8. 



2oo THE SHORT-STORY 

of courage, devotion, and endurance. There are 
certain admirable traits of character which cannot be 
acquired save through suffering, and which cannot be 
presented in a literary form without the accompani- 
ment of such circumstances as shall arouse in the 
reader the tender impulse of pity not unmixed with 
pain. 

There are many varieties and degrees of pathos. 
The emotion aroused may be so sweetly sad as to 
be almost entirely pleasurable; and, again, a story 
of failure, of repression, of denial, may fill the 
heart with dull, uneasing pain. There is the pathos 
which degenerates into a sniffle, and there is that 
which lies "too deep for tears." There is the delicate 
pathos which wavers tremulously into humor every 
now and then (as in Steele and the Scotch humor- 
ists) ; and there is that which, pushed too far, falls 
over the verge into the domain of the ludicrous. And 
there is the poignant, bitter pathos which is so 
akin to tragedy that it necessarily accompanies it 
and cannot be distinguished from it. 

The success of a pathetic story is dependent, first 
of all, of course, on the choice of a truly pathetic 
character or incident. The student who attempted 
to write a touching story which was based on a news 
paragraph relating the drowning of an infant in a 
twelve-gallon jar of buttermilk was lacking in a 



THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 201 

keen sense of the ludicrous. Thoroughly tragic to 
those intimately concerned, the incident has its 
pathos marred for readers by the element of the 
grotesque. It is to be remembered that simple 
material is always more adaptable for pathetic effects 
than the eccentric or sensational. 

A beginner often undertakes to handle a situation 
which he has actually observed, but which is dra- 
matically beyond his powers of effectual reproduction. 
He vaguely feels the strength of his material and 
trusts to it to prove itself. Such inadequacy of treat- 
ment can best be shown by an example from a student's 
theme. The bald outline of the action is this : At 
a Christmas party in London, a young man said in 
jest that he would place his ring on the hand of his 
future wife. He chose a splendid young woman 
whom he knew slightly. The incident passed off in 
laughter. Several years later, the man, a prosperous 
merchant in India, became domestically inclined. 
He chanced to remember the incident, and decided 
to write to the girl and ask her to be his wife. Let- 
ters went back and forth ; and finally the girl set out 
to meet him at Bombay. Here the writer seems to 
have had a momentary revelation of the dramatic 
(almost melodramatic) significance of the meet- 
ing on shipboard. For the girl, seized with a 
complete physical revulsion at the sight of the man 



202 THE SHORT-STORY 

grown coarse and stout, and, realizing instantly that 
she could not be happy with him, " threw herself at 
his feet, before that great crowd, and implored 
him to let her go home. He was very much hurt, 
but he begged her to remain in India and get 
acquainted with him. 'For,' said he, 'I am con- 
siderably better than I look.' She consented finally, 
and when he had shown her the beautiful home 
which he had prepared for her, she was somewhat 
reconciled to her fate, and married him. 

"Although he loved her and was always very kind, 
she was never happy. Of the three children that 
they had, only one was normal. The oldest was an 
idiot, and the other was a cripple. A short time after 
the birth of the youngest child, the mother went 
insane and, after a few years, died." 

The author, in troubled apology, appends the note : 
"I am afraid this is unpleasant, but it actually 
happened. I knew the people well." The word 
unpleasant describes the result with a fair degree 
of accuracy. Somewhere in that concluding para- 
graph, with its implied preconditions, there lies 
buried a pathetically tragic story which the author 
has been unable to render in its true emotional 
significance. Falling short of that, he has given a 
series of unpleasant facts. One must live through 
such a story keenly before he can do it justice. 



THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 203 

Even a truly pathetic situation will not have moving 
force unless the writer himself experiences the ap- 
propriate emotions. There is no chance of arousing 
a strong sentiment of pity by any such unfeeling 
account as this: — 

" Friends began to notice that Mrs. Case's mind 
was becoming deranged. They watched her, and 
discovered in time to save her life several attempts at 
suicide. After passing about six weeks in this 
manner, she succeeded in killing herself, and her 
body was found frozen on her son's grave." 

If there were any doubt that the bald narration of 
pathetic incidents is insufficient to arouse a sense of 
genuine pity, the newspaper, purveyor of daily 
tragedy and pathos, would be sufficient to overcome 
that doubt. If even a tenth of the sorrows of that 
list were made convincingly distressing and brought 
home to the reader, the newspaper would be 
drenched with tears, and the reader of many papers 
would go into hysteria. Fortunately, the harrowing 
accounts, not only through monotonous repetition, 
but through their very baldness and bareness of detail, 
are shorn of their emotional power. But a sensitive 
writer still may find in the daily press abundant 
sources of material fit for pathetic or tragic treat- 
ment. 

Great care must be taken in the elaboration of 



2o 4 THE SHORT-STORY 

pathos or tragedy. Good taste cannot be taught 
outright, but it does seem that writers should learn 
to distinguish readily between the horrible and the 
pathetic, the ugly and the tragic. A news incident 
elaborated by a student into a " pathetic tragedy" 
will serve for an example. The material is this: 
"A wounded soldier with both . legs ampu- 
tated and some ribs broken, is tenderly and de- 
votedly cared for by a Red Cross nurse. He loves 
her, and she watches by him for eight months, — 
until he dies." Here is an intensely pathetic situa- 
tion, slightly softened by the tenderness of the nurse 
and by the patient's grateful love for her. But 
notice what a change comes over it when a youth's 
fancy exaggerates the love element, and falsifies the 
pathos. The soldier is made to experience a de- 
ceptive feeling of returning strength ; he hopes to go 
back to his work, and he proposes marriage to his 
nurse. But she replies, "I could under no circum- 
stances marry an invalid, and you will always be 
confined to your bed." " Then," the story concludes, 
"he gave one wild cry of horror and fainted away. 
When he came to, he was so weak that he could not 
stand the shock, and was a corpse within an hour." 
In such a treatment of this situation there is some- 
thing of cold brutality and a good deal of melodrama. 
The amateur in story-writing very often works as 



THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 205 

from outside, viewing his creatures coldly, standing 
aloof from their joys and sorrows. Possibly the 
greatest lack in the average short-story writer is that 
of pure, strong, reasonable, sustained emotion. And 
nowhere does the lack appear more crudely than in 
the story of pathos or tragedy. Sympathy cannot 
be imitated. A working up of the pitiful results in 
sentimentalism ; and a working up of the tragic 
through the mere accumulation of harrowing de- 
tails results too frequently in melodrama. The 
author must himself live through the emotion, 
suffering vicariously for his creatures, before he can 
reproduce their heart life in anything like a real way. 
Differences in the method of presenting pathetic 
situations will account in some measure for the way 
in which the reader is affected. We are all familiar 
with the practice of Dickens in his skilful but con- 
scious accumulation of such pathetic details as will 
move to tears. The death of Paul Dombey, and that 
of Little Nell are excellent examples of this kind of 
art. That it is art, we cannot doubt; whether it is 
the finest art of pathos is another question. Often 
a slight detail may be made (with apparently uncon- 
scious suggestion) more significant than a whole 
catalogue of details. Daudet, in "The Death of the 
Dauphin," 1 exhibits in a boy's grief a repression 

1 Translated in Nettleton's " Specimens of the Short-Story." 



206 THE SHORT-STORY 

almost manly in its reserve. Brief, simple, yet 
powerfully suggestive is this sketch of the little king 
who must meet Death the leveller. No allowance 
will be made for little kings in that country ; he must 
pass at his own worth. But the gay French courtiers 
have never prepared the lad for death; and his 
ignorance of the situation intensifies the pathos. 
And, when an inkling of the truth is brought home to 
him, he merely turns his face to the wall to weep — 
a simple movement, but more expressive than many 
words would be. 

It must be remembered, in writing pathetic stories, 
that great griefs are never garrulous. Mrs. Brown- 
ing has given full expression to this principle of 
reserved emotional force in the lines : — 

" I tell you hopeless grief is passionless ; 
That only men incredulous of despair, 
Half taught in anguish, through the midnight air 
Beat upward to God's throne, in loud access 
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness 
In souls, as countries, lieth silent, bare, 
Under the blenching, vertical eye-glare 
Of the absolute heavens ! " 

The crude conditions of simple life, such as that of 
the western pioneers, offer opportunity for the pres- 
entation of situations which are rugged to the point 
of ugliness, but nevertheless very pitiful and very 



THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 207 

human. Blunt and rough as are some of Bret 
Harte's stories in details of workmanship, in the 
broad emotions of humor and of pathos they excel. 
For example, in "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," 
Harte has worked out of his rough, coarse material 
at least one situation of the purest pathos. In the 
four pages of concentrated tragedy, in which four 
persons meet their death, there is one account which 
is elaborated just a little in its pathos — the picture 
of Piney and the Duchess ; but there are two which 
are compressed to the very limit of dramatic suggest- 
iveness — the death of the gambler, Oakhurst, and 
that of Mother Shipton. " Tennessee's Partner" has 
strong feeling in reserve, and " Prosper's Old Mother" 1 
also excels in pathos . Hamlin Garland , another writer 
of uneven excellence, succeeds in drawing vivid pic- 
tures of rather hopelessly pathetic situations (" Main 
Travelled Roads "). Not so rugged, but no less gen- 
uine, is the pathos of Cable's " Old Creole Days," 
idyls of the Creole life in Louisiana. Quieter and more 
reserved are the pathetic sketches of soul-starvation 
and repression by Mary Wilkins Freeman, character- 
istic of the life of the New England poor. In the sto- 
ries of all these writers, as in Daudet's, pathos gains 
force through a wise parsimony and suggestive use 
of details. Reserve, repression, delicacy of feeling 

1 Harper's, April, 1902. 



2o8 THE SHORT-STORY 

are essential to the finest pathos. Tragedy may be 
blunt, open, coarse, revolting; but pathos is a finer 
thing. A single touch may make or mar the pathos 
of a character. Shakespeare has made Shylock a 
comic figure, rather than a tragic or pathetic one, 
by a few incidental details which dull the keen 
edge of our sympathy with him, save when he rises 
to such a pitch of eloquence that obstructions are 
overborne and the abused Jew becomes for one 
spendid moment a great tragic figure. 

Denial, lack, repression, sacrifice call for pity. 
When Marsh Rosemary 1 gives up her Jerry to that 
other woman, she reaches the height of the pathetic. 
Emmy 2 becomes heroic by a similar sacrifice — the 
dull monotony of self-repression rising at last into 
a height of dignity. The reader is glad that he can 
feel and appreciate the lack, the need, the sacrifice, 
the denial, the disappointment, the grief, the heart 
hunger of the character, whether the others in the 
story do or not. A sense of all this bitterness com- 
bined intensifies the pathos of "A Village Lear" till 
it becomes almost unbearable. 

Possibly because the emotion of pity is akin to that 
of maternal love, the griefs of little children can be 
made to seem most pitiful. The sense of their help- 
lessness contributes to the pathos of their troubles, 
1 Atlantic, 57 : 590, 2 Century, 19 : 499. 



THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 209 

Kipling's " Baa-Baa Black Sheep" owes its moving 
qualities very largely to the reader's lively apprecia- 
tion of the character of Punch and his feeling that 
the child is not properly appreciated by his aunt. 
Punch is a very live, human little boy, by no means 
foreordained to eternal damnation; he is simply 
misunderstood. The reader knows this at once. 
The repression or mistreatment of a sensitive child 
may be counted on as appealing to every one but a 
hardened villain. Hence the remarkable success of 
the tender little April sketches of childish joy and 
tears which are now so numerous. 

When the pathos of a child's life culminates in 
tragedy, the story hurts. "Silly," * by Maarten 
Maartens, is such a story. The tragedy is suffi- 
ciently artistic, but it is something of an infliction. 
The theme is the blind, unreasoning obedience 
of a simple-minded boy who is taught shrimp- 
catching by a philanthropic young countess, and is 
told by her always to obey his mother and his brother. 
One day the brother orders Silly to wade out farther 
into the water and to stay out until his return. 
But the brother forgets to return. And Silly wades 
farther and farther out, singing a foolish rhyme 
taught him by a stranger, " Shrimp, shrimp — all I 
need! ..." "And a great wave from God arose 

1 Success, Sept. 2, 1899. 
P 



210 THE SHORT-STORY 

on the breast of the waters and swept over them, into 
stillness and peace." Yes, undoubtedly it was better 
that Silly should die (for his own sake, as well as that 
of art), but the tragedy is a hard one and only after 
some reflection softens into peace. 

Somewhat similar in its emotional effect is a story 
by John Oxenham, entitled "Toine, Antoine, and 
Antoinette." 1 Here the poor little girl, with her 
incurable goitre and her passionate warmth of love 
for the man, after she has lost the one slight promise 
of joy in life, walks off quietly, blindly, over the edge 
of a bank and disappears from his sight into the lake 
before he can come to her. The child's misfortunes 
are cruelly heightened into tragedy. 

The foregoing examples would seem to indicate 
that the boundary line between the pathetic and the 
tragic is so dim that it often ceases to exist. Of 
the great stories that rank as tragedies, most are 
tinged with pathos. Even grim, ironical tragedies 
of fate, such as Maupassant's "The Necklace" 
and Hawthorne's "The Ambitious Guest," have 
a kind of reflective pathos, an after feeling, on 
contemplation of the story motive. The pathos of 
"The Birthmark" and of "Rappaccini's Daughter" 
is as deeply interfused as the little hand itself, and 
as subtle as the atmosphere of the poison flower. 

1 Everybody's, March, 1904. 



THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 211 

Tragedy and pathos merge insensibly in Virginia 
Boyle's " Black Silas." ' Silas stands out a very big 
black negro against a background of flame, — a lurid 
picture of agony which finally resolves itself into sim- 
ple, touching pathos. The overseer, Silas, disgraced 
by the murder of a sneaking rival, is left by his stern 
old master to choose his punishment. He elects to be 
branded with the mark of Cain and goes into a sort 
of voluntary exile. His " yellow gal" goes back on 
him. But faithful Silas saves his master's life and 
his home from fire, and, blind through his heroic 
efforts, receives freedom as his reward. The tragic 
effect is in the branding of Silas, rather than in his 
injury by fire. The height of the pathetic is reached 
in the desertion and the return of both the " yellow 
gal" and Silas's other friends in accordance with his 
disgrace or his honor with the master. 

A large proportion of the great short-stories are 
pathetic or tragic in effect. The field is very wide 
and the shades of emotion capable of portrayal 
almost innumerable. The chances of success and 
of failure are correspondingly great. There is the 
danger of treating a pathetic situation coldly, of 
calmly picturing a tragedy ; or, on the other hand, 
of becoming sentimental or melodramatic by an 
effort to pump up an emotion which does not pre- 
sent itself spontaneously. 

1 Century, January, 1900. 



212 THE SHORT-STORY 

In tragedy, especially, care must be taken not to 
degenerate into melodrama. Tragedy must be 
convincing. The following is an instance of melo- 
dramatic tragedy : — 

" But Gammon picked up courage enough to say, 

" ' Fannie, will you go with me and be mine ? ' 

"'No, Eddie, papa is gone, mamma is not well, 
and we are poor. So I must stay. I will be yours 
if you will stay with me and mamma.' 

"'I cannot stay with your mother. She is as 
mean as your father ever was.' 

" ' Oh, Eddie, how can you say so ? Once I would 
have gone with you, but now — ' 

"Boom! Boom! came two shots from a revolver 
which Gammon had jerked from his pocket. Fannie* 
fell lifeless and bleeding to the floor, and Gammon 
was out of sight in a moment." 

Of all the faults in this crude attempt at the tragic, 
the most glaring is that the tragedy is not credi- 
bilized in any way. 

The principle of reserve and dramatic suggestion 
is perhaps more important for tragic than for pathetic 
art. An excellent illustration of the principle is 
that cited by Brander Matthews in a foot-note to his 
" Philosophy of the Short-Story " : — 

"Around the very centre of motion, as in a whirl- 
wind, there may be perfect quiet, a quiet which is 



THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 213 

formidable in its very repose. In De Maupassant's 
terrific story of Corsican vengeance, l Une Vendetta,' 
in which the sole actor is a lonely old woman who 
trains a fierce dog so that he ultimately kills her 
enemy, the author simply tells us, at the end, that 
this quiet fiend of destruction went peacefully home 
and went to sleep. 'Elle dormit Men, cette nuit-la.' 
The cyclone has spent itself, and the silence 
left behind is more forcible than the cyclone 
itself." 

Tragic themes are difficult to handle, but admi- 
rably adapted to the brevity and compression of the 
short-story. It is significant that most of the really 
great short-stories are either tragic or pathetic, and 
that the masters of the short-story have given their 
preference to tragic themes — this in spite of the 
fact that many critics have tried to bar the painful 
emotions out of literature. There are those tragedies 
which present "a sublime spectacle of the vindication 
of an outraged moral law, assent to which by us gives 
a certain solemn pleasure." There are the tragedies 
which aim to "purify the soul through pity or terror." 
There are tragedies of fate, which appeal to our 
sense of common human destiny. But there are 
still other tragedies unclassifiable, apparently with- 
out a special purpose. Have these reason for exist- 
ence? 



2i 4 THE SHORT-STORY 

Horror and evil lend themselves readily to tragic 
treatment. How shall the author view them? 
We say at once that a story which presents horror 
and evil with any touch of cynicism or pessimism is 
a story with a bad aim. Yet we read many stories 
of this kind. We may say, perhaps, that crime and 
wickedness may be detached from the author's 
view of life — left to stand for themselves as artistic 
portrayals of real life, involving no interpretation by 
the author, predetermining the reader to no necessary 
attitude, but leaving him free to enjoy, to shudder at, 
to sicken with disgust, or to lose his feelings in a 
train of moralizing. Thus the author evades moral 
responsibility. The chance for making deep and 
vivid imaginative impressions will probably keep 
the stories of horror and of sin in favor with the 
greater writers and with many readers. But a story 
cannot receive universal or lasting appreciation if it 
leaves the bad taste of cynicism, pessimism, or de- 
spair. It is not high art to relax morally, to disgust 
with life, to dishearten, to render hopeless. This 
does not mean that art cannot portray the darker 
emotions : it means that they can and must be pre- 
sented in a wholesome or at least unharmful way. 
Maupassant's "La Mere Sauvage," and "Une Ven- 
detta," Balzac's "La Grande Breteche," Kipling's 
"The Man Who Would be King" and "At the End 



THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 215 

of the Passage," Poe's "The Black Cat," "The Tell- 
tale Heart," and "The Pit and the Pendulum," 
Hawthorne's "The Birthmark" and "Rappaccini's 
Daughter," and Stevenson's "Markheim" are 
essentially dark, ugly tragedies. But what strength 
of portrayal! Can we say such stories should be 
barred out of literature? They harrow the feelings, 
it is true ; but none of them would be likely to dis- 
hearten one, or to relax the moral fibres. 

Joy is not essential to the existence of the short- 
story. If it were, Poe, Kipling, Balzac, Mau- 
passant, even Hawthorne, would be the worst instead 
of the best of story-tellers. Their finest stories are 
anything but joyful. The short-story, it must be 
remembered, aims at quick, strong impressions — 
what Ho wells rather contemptuously calls "effect- 
ism." It does not represent the author's whole 
view of life, as does the novel, but merely his appre- 
ciation of a special phase of life. The joyless 
phases are there, apparent to all. And their por- 
trayal can be made very strong within the limits of 
the short-story. So we have these vivid, powerful 
sketches, quick as a summer shower and no more 
harmful. The world only looks the fresher and 
more wholesome after the lurid transfiguration of 
the lightning flash, and the sturdy things straighten 
up a little stiffer in the trail of the storm. 



216 THE SHORT-STORY 



III. Humor 



It is a sense of the eternal fitness of things that sug- 
gests a plea for humor in the short-story following a 
plea for a finer use of the pathetic and the tragic 
elements. For great tragedy and fine pathos are 
dependent for their perfection upon the saving grace 
of humor in their author. Without a keen sense of 
the ludicrous, tragedy degenerates into melodrama, 
and pathos into bathos. Nor can humor, on the 
other hand, live long without an admixture of the 
pathetic; for so delicately poised is our emotional 
nature that it wavers tremulously between mirth 
and sadness. The greatest humorists throughout 
the ages have been those large souls who have grasped 
this secret ; who have comprised in their experience 
of life this complexity of emotional effects; who, 
with mild tolerance of the incongruous and un- 
expected combinations of events, have embraced 
all in a prevailingly sunny philosophy of life ; mer- 
curial temperaments these, flashing from gay to 
grave and sad. Theirs is never a broad glare of 
humor, but a cheery patch of sunlight where a stray 
beam has shot through the dense leafage of a forest. 

To say that a humorist should have a sense of 
pathos and of tragedy and be acquainted with the 
deeper things of life is not equivalent to saying that 



THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 217 

his work must be fraught with earnestness and serious 
purpose. It is fashionable nowadays to spy out an 
undercurrent of sense in even the most frivolous of 
humorists, if candor compels us to admit that we 
enjoy them. A very intelligent man declared 
that he valued Jerome Jerome's "Idle Thoughts" 
because, in spite of their apparent lightness, there is 
beneath a solid foundation of sober thought ! Pos- 
sibly a generation may arise some day who will 
have the courage and good taste to respond to the 
apparent lightness of such deliciously irresponsible 
essays in humor in spite of, rather than because of, 
the not so apparent solidity beneath. At present 
there is a sad lack of humor (that is, if we exclude 
from the class of humor all varieties of caustic wit). 
The magazines call in vain for humorous short- 
stories. There is no one to supply them. For 
even the young people, who might be expected to 
have leisure and inclination to see some fun in living, 
have their budding sense of humor blighted by a 
premature appreciation of the solemnity and strenu- 
ousness of life. College students write "appre- 
ciations" laboriously bringing out the melancholy 
fact that Falstaff was a liar and a rogue; they can 
prove it by the text, and they prove it to the bitter 
end. They say, too, that Lamb's essays are not to 
be taken seriously; for they are not only frivolous, 



218 THE SHORT-STORY 

but too extravagant to be depended on (that roast- 
pig story, for example: expect a college student to 
take any stock in that ?). Goldsmith, they admit, 
had some humorous insight into character; but 
then, everybody knows the " Vicar of Wakefield " is 
so illogical in plot that we cannot call it a novel. It 
is too long and loose for a short-story, too concrete 
for an essay, not serious enough for a sermon; so, 
they conclude, it is not much of anything at all. 
With commendable consistency and moral earnest- 
ness they have left Rabelais, Le Sage, Cervantes, and 
Boccaccio out of their libraries and their conver- 
sation. They will admit an expurgated Chaucer — 
as a language study book. Shakespeare's comedies 
they read, as a matter of course, but prefer his 
tragedies ; and, if they incidentally bump up against 
a mountain of his mirth, proceed to lay it flat by 
explaining that such humor exists only in a riotous 
and immoral age, when men's thought and action are 
prompted by an extravagant intensity of feeling. 
The humor of eighteenth-century fiction must not, 
of course, be mentioned in polite society; for it, 
too, is an excrescence of one of those marvellous 
epochs in the emotional life of man which literary 
historians dub creative periods. It too, like almost 
everything genius has produced, occasionally errs 
in taste. And the most that modern criticism does 



THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 219 

for the big rough humor of that age is to forgive it 
and forget it. For this particular variety of humor 
advancing civilization seems to have refined out of 
existence. 

But there is Addison, the perfect humorist. There 
is nothing coarse or virile in Addison's humor, nothing 
broad, startlingly distorted, nastily suggestive, — al- 
most nothing without a very legitimate and laudable 
moral purpose. We have here a civilized humor, 
all serene, ladylike, eminently respectable — and a 
humor we can analyze. Shall we then crown Ad- 
dison the merry monarch? No one has harnessed 
up and trained the paces of a nicer humor, nor set a 
more respectable mission on the driver's seat. We 
shall long be drawn by it through many pleasant 
places ; and it is safe to predict that it will never run 
away with us. 

Steele's humor runs in double harness with his 
pathos; and now and then one unaccountably 
breaks loose and carries us away. We are brought 
back, however, by the zeal of the literary historian 
pointing out the fact that Steele's missionary en- 
deavors were always thoroughly irregular, futile, 
and well-meaning. Perhaps, when the hearts of men 
grow young once more and the flawless Addison, 
together with the graver moralists, has had his day, 
poor foolish, tender-hearted, wayward, inconsistent 



220 THE SHORT-STORY 

Dick, along with Chaucer, Lamb, and Goldsmith, 
will come into his own. For, after all, the essence 
of true humor is its broad humanity of spirit. 

At present we are too busy and too earnest to give 
the gentle humorist his due. We have unfurled 
such a tremendous banner of " purpose" above 
our hosts of criticism that we have" almost blotted 
out the sky. Scientists and utilitarians have so 
thoroughly analyzed our sunshine that we are dis- 
posed to piously thank God for its energizing quali- 
ties and its effect upon the crops, and utterly forget 
that it was meant for joy. Now, if a writer really 
must be assured that he has a mission before he sets 
to work at presenting a genuinely mirthful view 
of life, let him adopt the aim of banishing grief, 
despair, and pessimism from some hearts; of re- 
storing a wholesome balance between the darker 
and the brighter moods which normally contribute 
to our make-up; of destroying the deadly microbe 
of earnestness which is fairly eating out our hearts, 
making us morbid, partially insane, and thoroughly 
uncharitable at times through our failure to realize 
that there is, after all, if we understand our fellow- 
man aright, a vast deal of fun in living. The humor- 
ist will always be misunderstood and underestimated 
by a certain class of people ; but it should be enough 
for him to know that he has, notwithstanding, made a 



THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 221 

positive contribution to the sum of human happiness. 
For humor does not merely raise a laugh ; rather, it 
stirs all those sympathies and associations which 
go to make up universal human brotherhood. In 
its total effect upon our complex nature, humor is 
thus the most healthful and beneficent of all emotions, 
resulting normally in sanity of poise, in sweetness 
and charity of spirit, and in unswerving opti- 
mism. 

Inasmuch as the humorous mood, like the tragic, 
cannot be sustained pure through a long period of 
time, it is excellently adapted to the scope of the 
short-story — so excellently adapted that it is sur- 
prising that the proportion of genuinely humor- 
ous short-stories since the time of Irving and Haw- 
thorne is so small. But there may yet be found in 
the magazine literature of the day the story of hu- 
morous diction ("O. Henry" and Henry Wallace 
Phillips) ; the story of humorous plot or motive (J. 
Futrelle, " The Gray Ghost," Everybody's, August, 
1963) ; the story of the humorously unconventional 
situation (Bunner, " Love-Letters of Smith " ; White, 
" Life of the Winds of Heaven," McClure's, August, 
1903); the farcically romantic situation (Loomis, 
" The Cannibals and Mr. Buffum," Cosmopolitan, 
January, 1906, Marsh, " The Girl on the Sands," 
Strand, October, 1904) ; the broad humor of adult 



222 THE SHORT-STORY 

characterization (Harte, " Colonel Starbottle for 
the Plaintiff," Harper's, March, 1901); and the 
more delicate humor of child life (Myra Kelly 
and Josephine Dodge Daskam, et al.). While 
these stories, selected almost at random from a 
shelf of magazines, may not have the exact flavor 
of the classic humorists (I suppose there must be 
classic humorists), they are sufficient to indicate that 
in American authors the sense of humor is still 
making a struggle for existence. It is greatly to 
be desired that the humorous story-teller should be 
more generally considered as a public benefactor, 
and that a lively sense of humor should be considered 
a desirable trait of character in every man. Steven- 
son speaks somewhere of "such radical qualities as 
honor, and pathos, and humor," a combination which 
startles the conventional thinker with a sense of incon- 
gruity, so accustomed have we become to regarding a 
sense of the ludicrous as a rarity. It is desirable for 
all men, but almost indispensable to one who would 
make literature. Let the scientist, the philosopher, 
the moralist, despise it if they will ; but let the literary 
man reach out after this great good. There really 
ought to be an examination of candidates for ad- 
mission to this goodly company, on the trait of 
humor. It would be likely, as Barrie says, to "keep 
out mony a dreich body." It might, on the other 



THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 223 

hand, serve as admission ticket for many a fresh 
young genius. 

The subject of humor might be expounded very 
fully, if not very satisfactorily. One of the most 
discouraging signs of the time is the fact that so 
many people are writing about humor, — long, dull 
articles explaining what it is or isn't, and lining up 
examples without number to prove it so. The pains- 
taking solemnity of such articles is slightly ludi- 
crous to those who already have a sense of humor ; 
and it is doubtful whether those who have it not 
will ever acquire it through such reading. The best 
of these articles (which may be easily searched out 
from Poole's) do constitute quite an excellent body of 
belief for those who desire to know the doctrine. But 
the person of truly humorous inclination will perhaps 
prefer Barrie's account of how Lang Tammas be- 
came a humorist, and will like to have his individ- 
ual theory of what is humorous to him, and a full 
list of favorite illustrations from his readings. To 
him is recommended a list of readings in humor. 
The genuine humorist frankly disregards all rules. 
And the best one can do for a humorist is to permit 
him to be merry and let his mirth expand. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE SPIRIT OF THE AUTHOR 

The story of mere incident or ingenious plot does 
not necessarily reveal the spirit of the author; but 
the story which interprets character and human life 

— the story which makes a distinct emotional appeal 

— inevitably suggests the personality of the author, 
no matter how objectively he works. Hawthorne 
considered himself a most objective writer. He 
says, in a mood of self-confession: — 

"A cloudy veil stretches over the abyss of my 
nature. I have, however, no love of secrecy and 
darkness. I am glad to think that God sees through 
my heart, and if any angel has power to penetrate 
into it, he is welcome to know everything that is 
there. Yes, and so may any mortal who is capable 
of full sympathy, and therefore worthy to come into 
my depths. But he must find his own way there. 
I can neither guide nor enlighten him. It is this 
involuntary reserve, I suppose, that has given the 
objectivity to my writings; and when people think 
that I am pouring myself out in a tale or an essay, 
224 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AUTHOR 225 

I am merely telling what is common to human 
nature, not what is peculiar to myself. I sympathize 
with them, not they with me." 

But has any author ever succeeded better in stamp- 
ing upon the reader's mind the impression not only 
of his imaginative genius, but of his temperament 
and even his character? Take his pure, limpid 
children's stories. They illustrate the author's state- 
ment that he has no love of secrecy or darkness. 
And we can well imagine that the man who crowned 
such dark stories as "The Birthmark," "Rappac- 
cini's Daughter," and "The Scarlet Letter" with 
such excellent symbolic meaning was truly glad that 
God saw through his heart. His religious belief 
and his trust in God and in his providence shine 
through the gloom of even his tragic stories. It is 
to be breathed in with their very atmosphere. And, 
lighting up the sombre themes which his imagination 
loved to dwell upon, his genial humor plays over 
all, attracting young and old alike. One cannot 
read Hawthorne long without becoming subtly 
aware of this intimacy of approach, as if he were 
being drawn into a friendly circle maintained about 
the personality of Hawthorne. Similarly, Irving' s 
good-natured humanity stamps its impression of the 
author's temperament upon our moods. And, after 
an hour with Poe, we need hardly go to biography 



226 THE SHORT-STORY 

to understand that he had " mental disease raised to 
the nth power" coupled with the most daring and 
original genius. We could even guess out some of 
the melancholy facts of the author's life. 

The spirit of the author is not to be judged by 
his choice of material, but rather by his choice of 
motive, his manner of treatment, and his total atti- 
tude toward his story. Says Winchester : * — 

" Every kind* of unrighteousness maybe depicted, 
and yet the work be moral. But when literature 
becomes blind to nature and the results of sin, it is 
false to ultimate facts and so offends not only against 
morality, but against art. A book is not immoral 
because it is full of pictures of sin, nor moral because 
it is crammed with saints. l Richard III ' is moral, 
though its hero is almost a devil; while some very 
immoral novels may still be found in Sunday-school 
libraries. . . . Life must be shown truly, if wholly, 
so that artistic admiration and moral condemna- 
tion of a splendidly evil character go hand in 
hand." 

Inasmuch as sin and evil and moral crises in the 
life of man offer such opportunities for powerful 
literary effects on account of their universality of 
appeal, the morality of tone of a story must be 
considered an integral part of its impression. The 

1 " Principles of Literary Criticism," p. in and p. 115. 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AUTHOR 227 

short-story has no call to preach. It does not need to 
teach a moral truth. But it must never be immoral; 
and it rarely is quite unmoral, if it is a story worth 
remembering. The term morality has been given 
here a special breadth of meaning, as in Howells's 
" Criticism and Fiction " (p. 83) : — 

"Morality penetrates all things, it is the soul of all 
things. Beauty may clothe it on, whether it is false 
morality and an evil soul, or whether it is true and a 
good soul. In the one case the beauty will corrupt, 
and in the other it will edify, and in either case it 
will infallibly and inevitably have an ethical effect, 
now light, now grave, according as the thing is light 
or grave.' ' 

The moral tone of a story appears best in the 
author's handling of the emotional elements. It 
centres about moral crises, the course of love, and 
humorous, pathetic, and tragic incidents. 

In the handling of the love element, the greatest 
sin against morality has been, not the incidental 
coarseness of the mediaeval tale or of the eighteenth- 
century fiction, — for that is disgusting and therefore 
not so dangerous, — but rather a clever sentimen- 
talism, a more refined and hence more subtle eroti- 
cism, combined with the assumption of the total 
and inevitable supremacy of desire over conscience. 
Not only in French fiction, but in English as well, 



228 THE SHORT-STORY 

there is a distinct department devoted to this natural- 
istic treatment of the passion of love in its irregular 
developments. It owes its success to a stimulation 
of the senses, to a rousing of powerful though de- 
grading emotions which act as a drug on conscience, 
and to the fascination which an account of wicked- 
ness seems to have for the imagination of even the 
most godly. The American novel, for the most part, 
and the American short-story altogether shun this 
prostitution of the muse of literature, devoting them- 
selves to the picturing of pure love and normal, 
honest passion, to the exclusion of guilty intrigues, 
betrayals, and even the flirtations of the lowest 
grade. The tone of the mass of American magazine 
fiction is good and clean. 

The author, by his attitude toward a character at 
a crisis, can very delicately determine the reader's 
conception of the conduct represented. For example, 
in reading " Baa-Baa Black Sheep," no one feels 
shocked when Punch threatens to stab the black- 
haired villain, Harry, with the table knife. We have 
been prepared for this. We feel no hostile stirrings 
of ethical condemnation when Punch commits suicide 
by licking off the paint from his Noah's Ark animals. 
The conditions are made to justify extreme measures 
such as these. Again, in "A Note of Scarlet," the 
reader is drawn into such genial sympathy with the 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AUTHOR 229 

woman that, however conventional and proper he 
himself may be, he experiences a feeling of relief 
when she breaks all precedent and knits a mat of 
"a all-fired red." And he is gradually led on into 
sympathy with her degeneration so that he almost 
forgets to be shocked when she " cuts" church, and 
wanders off to the river, where she contemplates a 
solitary fish-fry on the holy Sabbath. We have not 
all broken loose in just this way; but we have all 
been cramped by habit and convention, and most 
of us have been tempted to cut loose just for once. 
In the same inexplicable way, Balzac in " La Grande 
Breteche " wins the liveliest sympathy for Madame 
de Merret, though here our judgment distinctly 
tells us she is a wrongdoer. 

Where comment is introduced, the author's atti- 
tude stands self-revealed. A single sentence sug- 
gests a philosophy of life. Garland's belief that 
environment to a very large extent determines char- 
acter and action is to be guessed from the tone of 
the story, "A Branch Road," but it is expressed 
outright in this commentary : — 

"He thought how bright and handsome Ed used 
to be, and he felt after all that it was no wonder she 
married him. Life pushes us into such things." 

The volume of "Main Travelled Roads" has a 
distinct unity of emotional coloring suggestive of the 



230 THE SHORT-STORY 

author's whole view of life, a sense of the predomi- 
nance of hardship and evil crossed here and there by 
an inexplicable spirit of hopefulness. The author's 
temper and point of view are admirably set forth in 
the introductory remarks before the title-page : — 

"The main-travelled road in the West (as every- 
where) is hot and dusty in summer, and desolate and 
drear with mud in fall and spring, and in winter the 
winds sweep the snow across it ; but it does sometimes 
cross a rich meadow where the songs of the larks and 
bobolinks and blackbirds are tangled. Follow it 
far enough, it may lead past a bend in the river 
where the water laughs eternally over its shallows. 

"Mainly it is long and wearyful and has a dull 
little town at one end, and a home of toil at the other. 
Like the main-travelled road of life, it is traversed 
by many classes of people, but the poor and the 
weary predominate." 

This is a sad view, but not altogether cynical and 
bitter. Pushed further, it might become fatalism, 
pessimism, cynicism. One cannot read Hardy's 
volume, "Life's Little Ironies," without feeling now 
and then a distinct antagonism to the author's view 
of life. To select a single example, " On the Western 
Circuit," an intrigue plot involving the betrayal of a 
simple-minded girl, the entrapping of her betrayer 
into marriage, and the boomerang effects upon the 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AUTHOR 231 

woman who helped prepare the trap, there are fre- 
quent unpleasant glimpses of the author's attitude 
toward the situation. The story is really an ethical 
situation, but it is presented calmly, ironically, as if 
Nature were simply having her own way in playing 
grim little jokes upon the characters. The man is 
"curvilinear and sensuous"; the heroine, a fair 
product of nature, whose pinkness and freshness 
"made a deeper impression on his sentiments" 
every time he looked upon her. The country girl's 
mistress views the development of the intrigue in a 
peculiarly detached way. The man proceeds to 
win the girl, purely as a matter of circumstance. 
"Much he deplored trifling with her feelings for the 
sake of a passing desire; and he could only hope 
that she might not live to suffer on his account." 
The guilt is laid on neither person. Anna is alto- 
gether too ignorant to deserve half the blame. And 
the man is gently excused by some such comment 
as this : "Awkward as such unintentional connections 
were. ..." By a similar series of unintentional 
downward steps, Anna's mistress drifts away from 
love of her own husband and, for no more apparent 
reason than that Anna's betrayer has once held her 
hand in mistake for Anna's, falls passionately in 
love with him on her own account. Naturally, the 
outcome of such a tangle is nothing pleasant or 



-'3- 



THE SHORT-STORY 



encouraging. We cannot accuse Hardy of making 
this picture of sin alluring ; but what shall we say of 
three characters (and, apparently, the author back 
of them) viewing an ethical situation ( without the 
slightest connection, one way or the other, with the 
standards of morality ? Moreover, there is nothing 
splendid in the picture ; all is sordid and low. Such 
detachment from moral standards is artificial and 
abnormal; and, if it is our habitual point of view, 
it is neither wise nor kind to seek to spread it. 
If one does not wish to become a literary malefactor, 
let him first make sure of the purity of his purpose, 
and then, before making his work public, carefully 
consider whether his work is within the limits of 
good taste; for " taste is always on the side of the 
angels." 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

Charles Baldwin. "American Short-Stories." Long- 
mans, Green & Co. 

Bliss Perry. "A Study of Prose Fiction," Chapter XII. 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 

Henry Canby. "The Short-Story." "Yale Studies in 
English." H. Holt & Co. 

Brander Matthews. "Philosophy of the Short-Story." 
Longmans, Green & Co. 

Arlo Bates. "Talks on Writing English," series i and 2. 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 

Charles Barrett. " Short-Story Writing." Baker & Tay- 
lor. 

Jessup and Canby. "The Book of the Short-Story." D. 
Appleton, 1903. 

George Henry Nettleton. " Specimens of the Short-Story." 
H. Holt & Co., 1901. 

Sherwin Cody. "The World's Greatest Short-Stories." 
A. C. McClurg, 1002. 

Caleb T. Winchester. "Principles of Literary Criticism." 
The Macmillan Co. 



233 



READING LIST 

The classification made here is arbitrary and not final. It 
serves only to illustrate points developed in the text and to 
suggest other points for study. Some of the stories therefore 
recur in new groupings. 

I. THE MOTIVE 

Hawthorne. The Birthmark. Rappaccini's Daughter. 
.Lady Eleanore's Mantle. The Great Stone Face. 
The Prophetic Pictures. The Ambitious Guest. 
Maupassant. The Necklace. The Piece of String. A 

, Coward ("The Odd Number," Harper's). 
Garland. Up the Coulee ("Main Travelled Roads"). 
Kipling. Baa-Baa Black Sheep. 
Mary Wilkins Freeman. A Solitary ("A New England 

Nun, and Other Stories," Harper's). 
Ruth Stuart. A Note of Scarlet, Century, May- June, 1899. 
"Octave Thanet." Expiation, Scribner's, 7:55. Trusty 
No. 49, Century, 18 : 212. 

II. THE PLOT 
1. The Detective Plot 

Poe. "The Gold-Bug. Murders in the Rue Morgue. The 

Mystery of Marie Roget. The Purloined Letter. 
Doyle. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The Hound of 

the Baskervilles. The Leather Funnel (McClure's, 

November, 1902). 
Twain. A Double -Barrelled Detective Story, Harper's, 

January, 1902. 
Davis. Gallegher, Scribner's, 8 : 150. 
234 



READING LIST 235 

2. The Ingenious Plot 

Stevenson. The Sire de Maletroit's Door ("New Arabian 

Nights"). 
Chambers. The Young Man in a Hurry, Harper's, August, 

1903. 
"O. Henry." The Lotus and the Cockleburrs, Everybody's, 

October, 1903. 
Aldrich. Marjorie Daw, Atlantic, 31 : 407. Two Bites at 

a Cherry, Atlantic, 57 : 31. Goliath, Century, 23 : 561. 
Burgess. Mademoiselle Parchesi, McClure's, October, 1900. 
Longfellow. The Notary of Perigueux. 

3. The Problem Plot 

Stockton. The Lady, or the Tiger? Century, 25 : 83. 

Poe. Bertrand B . 

Kipling. Bimi. 

Balzac. A Passion in the Desert. 

Garland. Up the Coulee. A Branch Road ("Main Trav- 
elled Roads"). 

Maupassant. A Coward ("The Odd Number," Harper's). 

Harte. A Mercury of the Foothills, Cosmopolitan, July, 1901. 

Hawthorne. The Birthmark. Rappaccini's Daughter. 

Edith Wharton. Souls Belated ("The Greater Inclina- 
tion," Scribner J s). 

4. Plot Unities 

Kipling. Little Tobrah. Cupid's Arrows. 

Poe. -The Masque of the Red Death. -The Pit and the 

Pendulum. 
Stevenson. Markheim. 

5. Dramatic Subdivision 

Kipling. -Baa-Baa Black Sheep. 

Coppe'e. The CaptarH's Vices ("Ten Tales," Harper's). 



236 THE SHORT-STORY 

Virginia Boyle. Black Silas, Century, January, 1900. 
Brander Matthews. In the Vestibule Limited, Harper's, 
March, 1891. 

III. UNITY OF TONE. IMPRESSIONISM 

Hawthorne. The White Old Maid. Rappaccini's Daugh- 
ter. The Birthmark. 

Poe. Fall of the Melancholy House of Usher. Ligeia. 
Berenice. The Pit and the Pendulum. "The Cask of 
Amontillado. The Tell-Tale Heart. "The Black Cat. 

Maupassant. Moonlight ("The Odd Number"). 

Edith Wharton. A Journey ("The Greater Inclination"). 

Kipling. The Brushwood Boy. They, Scribnefs, August, 
1904. 

IV. CHARACTER 

1. Sketches 

Boccaccio. The Patient Griselda (translated in Cody's 

"The World's Greatest Short-Stories"). 
Addison. "Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. Spectator. 
Poe. -The Man of the Crowd. 
Hawthorne. Sylph Etherege. Old Esther Dudley. 
Julia Tutwtler. Mammy, Atlantic, January, 1903. 
Maclaren. Our Sermon Taster. " Beside the Bonnie Brier 

Bush." 
Morris. Simon L'Ouvrier, Collier's Weekly, August 25, 1906. 

2. Stories of Character 

Coppe'e. My Friend Meurtrier ("Ten Tales"). 

Balzac. The Atheist's Mass. Christ in Flanders ("Bal- 
zac's Shorter Stories." Henry Altemus & Co.). 

Kipling. The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney. -Wee 
Willie Winkie. His Majesty the King. 



READING LIST 237 

Mary Wilkins Freeman. A Poetess, Harper's, 81 : 197. 
A New England Prophet, Harper's, 89 : 601. A New 
England Nun. A Church Mouse. A Kitchen Colonel 
("A New England Nun, and Other Stories," Harper's). 

Page. The Old Gentleman of the Black Stock, Harper's, 
October, 1894. 

Davis. The Bar Sinister, Scribner's, March, 1902. 

Dr. Brown. Rab and his Friends ("Leisure Hours"). 

Carney and Thomas. Army Jack, McClure's, January, 
1902. 

Harte. Sally Dows. 

[See also: George Eliot, " Sketches of Clerical Life " ; Besant, 
" All Sorts and Conditions of Men" ; Barrie, " Auld Licht Idylls," 
" A Window in Thrums" ; Crockett, " The Stickit Minister."] 

3. The Development of Character 

Kipling. A Second-Rate Woman. A Bank Fraud. Baa- 
Baa Black Sheep. The Man Who Would be King. 

Harte. The Fool of Five Forks, Living Age, 123 : 416. 

Coppe'e. The Captain's Vices ("Ten Tales," Harper's). 

Ruth Stuart. A Note of Scarlet, Century, May- June, 
1899. 

Mary Wilkins Freeman. A Solitary ("A New England 
Nun, and Other Stories"). 

George Eliot. "Silas Marner. 

[Study the development in Barrie's " Sentimental Tommy," 
Scribner's, v. 19-v. 20, and in George Madden Martin's " Emmy 
Lou " stories in McClure's, 1902-1903.] 

4. Character at a Crisis 

Coppee. The Substitute ("Ten Tales," Harper's). 
Maupassant. A Coward ("The Odd Number"). 
Stevenson. Markheim. 



238 THE SHORT-STORY 

Mary Wilkins Freeman. The Revolt of "Mother," Har- 
per's, 8 1 : 553. Emmy, Century, 19 : 499. A Village 
Singer ("A New England Nun and Other Stories," 
Harper's). 

Sarah Jewett. Marsh Rosemary, Atlantic, 57 : 590. 

Virginia Boyle. Black Silas, Century, January, 1900. 

R. H. Davis. Her First Appearance, Harper's, 84 : 101. 
The Other Woman, Scribner's, 9 : 385. An Unfinished 
Story, Harper's, 83 : 727. 

Rex Beach. The Test, McClure's, December, 1904. The 
Shyness of Shorty, McClure's, February, 1904. 

James Hopper. The Failure, McClure's, January, 1904. 
The Maestro of Balangilang, McClure's, March, 1905. 

Joseph Keating. Tally, the Coward, Everybody's, No- 
vember, 1904. Yanto the Waster, Everybody's, July, 1904. 

James Lane Allen. Flute and Violin, Harper's, Decem- 
ber, 1890. 

William Williams. The Last Choice of Crusty Dick, 
Cosmopolitan, 19 : 561. 

Annie Donnell. The Hundred and Oneth, Harper's, 
February, 1902. 

"Octave Thanet." Victor, Harper's, April, 1902. 

5. Characters in Contrast 

Harte.— Outcasts of Poker Flat. 

Stevenson. A Lodging for the Night ("New Arabian 

Nights"). 
Garland. Up the Coulee ("Main Travelled Roads"). 

V. THE DIALOGUE 

Kipling. The Story of the Gadsbys. The Education of 

Otis Yeere. The Hill of Illusion. 
Hope. The Dolly Dialogues. 



READING LIST 239 

Ollivant. The Lord, and the Lady's Glove, McClure's, 

February, 1902. 
J. L. Long. The Siren, Century, July, 1903. 
Edith Wharton. The Twilight of the God ("The Greater 

Inclination"). 
Howells. Parlor Farces (in Harper's Magazine). 

[See also the dialogue in George Eliot's " Mill on the Floss," 
James's "The Tragic Muse," Meredith's "The Egoist," Defoe's 
" Colonel Jaque," and Madame D'Arblay's " Evelina." Poet- 
Lore and The Smart Set print numerous dialogue short-stories.] 

VI. THE SETTING 

J. W. Linn. The Girl at Duke's, McClure's, August, 1903. 

Mary Wilkins Freeman. Emmy, Century, 19 : 499. 

Harte. -Outcasts of Poker Flat. Prosper's Old Mother, 
Harper's, April, 1902. 

Garland. Under the Lion's Paw. The Branch Road. Up 
the Coulee ("Main Travelled Roads"). 

Matthews. Vignettes of Manhattan. 

Halevy. Parisian Points of View (Harper's). 

Kipling. In the Rukh. 

R. T. Fagan. Collier's Weekly, April 8, 1905. 

Allen. A Kentucky Cardinal, Harper's, May- June, 1894. 

Williams. The Last Choice of Crusty Dick, McClure's, 
December, 1902. 

Wister. Philosophy 4. In a State of Sin, Harper's, Feb- 
ruary, 1902. 

Oviatt. Introducing Thacher, McClure's, May, 1902. 

Eleanor Hoyt. A Little Sister to the East Side, Every- 
body's, September, 1904. 

Max Foster. A Christmas Failure, Everybody's, January, 
1904. 

Sarah Jewett. Fame's Little Day, Harper's, March, 1895. 
Sister Peacham's Turn, Harper's, December, 1902. 



2 4 o THE SHORT-STORY 

Vibginia Cloud. Mrs. Chick, Century, December, 1902. 
Ruth Stuart. The Woman's Exchange of Simpkinsville, 

Harper's, 86 : 454. 
"Charles Craddock." The Dancin' Party at Harrison's 

Cove, Atlantic, May, 1878. 
George Hibbard. The Morning Call, Harper's, January, 

1903. 

Dialect 

Morrison. On the Stairs ("Tales of Mean Streets"). 

Ford. Wanted: A Match-Maker, Harper's, September, 1900. 

Helen Martin. The Betrothal of Elypholate Yingst, Cos- 
mopolitan, June, 1903. Ellie's Furnishing, McClure's, 
December, 1903. 

[The stories of Barrie, Maclaren, Crockett, Cable, Page, and 
Harris will be found rich in dialect.] 

VII. STORIES OF FANTASY 

Irving. Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Rip Van Winkle. 

Poe. The Black Cat. The Pit and the Pendulum. Ligeia- 
Berenice. The Masque of the Red Death. 

Hawthorne. The White Old Maid. The Birthmark. Mon- 
sieur du Miroir. Feathertop. Rappaccini's Daughter. 

Fitz- James O'Brien. What Was It? A Mystery (reprinted 
from Harper's, March, 1859, in Baldwin's "American 
Short-Stories'"'). 

Balzac. The Wild Ass's Skin. The Elixir of Life. 

Coppee. The Sabots of Little Wolff ("Ten Tales," Har- 
per's). 

Stockton. The Beeman of Orne. The Griffin and the 
Minor Canon ("Fanciful Tales"). 

Doyle. The Leather Funnel, McClure's, November, 1902. 
The Hound of the Baskervilles. 

Kipling. The Phantom 'Rickshaw. The Strange Ride. 
The Return of Imray's Ghost. The Man Who Would 



READING LIST 241 

be King. At the End of the Passage. "The Finest 
Story in the World." The Sending of Dana Da. The 
Brushwood Boy. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. Kaa's Hunting 
(Jungle Books). They, Scribner's, August, 1904. 

Mary Wilkins Freeman. A Gentle Ghost, Harper's, 79 : 
366. The Twelfth Guest, Harper's, 80:97. The 
Shadows on the Wall, Everybody's, March, 1903. The 
Vacant Lot, Everybody's, September, 1902. 

J. L. Long. The Siren, Century, July, 1903. 

Stevenson. The Suicide Club ("New Arabian Nights"). 

Margaret Sherwood. The Princess Pourquoi, Scribner's, 
November, 1902. 

[See also " Arabian Nights," and the romances of Jack London 
and J. K. Bangs.] 

VIII. LOVE STORIES 

The Book of Ruth (Bible). 

Kipling. Without Benefit of Clergy. The Courting of 
Dinah Shadd. They, Scribner's, August, 1904. A Way- 
side Comedy. The Hill of Illusion. 

Garland. Among the Corn-Rows. Mrs. Ripley's Trip. 

Aldrich. Marjorie Daw, Atlantic, 31 : 407. 

Long. The Siren, Century, July, 1903. 

Linn. The Girl at Duke's, McClure's, August, 1903. 

Chambers. The Young Man in a Hurry, Harper's, August, 
1903. 

Ollivant. The Lord, and the Lady's Glove, McClure's, 
February, 1902. 

Harte. The Fool of Five Forks, Living Age, 125 : 145. Pros- 
pers Old Mother, Harper's, April, 1902. 

Sarah Orne Jewett. Marsh Rosemary, Atlantic, 57 : 590. 

Mary Wilkins Freeman. Emmy, Century, 19 : 499. 

Ruth Stuart. A Note of Scarlet, Century, May- June, 
1899. 



242 THE SHORT-STORY 

IX. PATHOS AND TRAGEDY 

Daudet. The Death of the Dauphin (translated in Nettle- 
ton's " Specimens of the Short-Story." Holt & Co.). 

Mary Wilkins Freeman. A Village Lear ("A New Eng- 
land Nun, and Other Stories," Harper's). 

Maarten Maartens. Silly, Success, September 2, 1899. 

Kipling. Baa-Baa Black Sheep. 

Oxenham. Antoine, Nette, and Antoinette, Everybody's, 
March, 1904. 

Kate Douglas Wiggin. Patsy. The Birds' Christmas Carol. 

Frances Hodgson Burnett. In the Closed Room, Mc- 
Clure's, August-September, 1904. 

Josephine Dodge Daskam. A Little Brother to the Books, 
Scribner's, 32 : 400. 

Harte. Tennessee's Partner. Outcasts of Poker Flat. The 
Luck of Roaring Camp ("The Luck of Roaring Camp, 
and Other Stories." Houghton, Mifflin & Co.). 

S. R. Crockett. Accepted of the Beasts ("The Stickit 
Minister"). 

Sarah Jewett. Marsh Rosemary, Atlantic, 57 : 590. 

Virginia Boyle. Black Silas, Century, January, 1900. 

Poe. The Assignation. The Tell-Tale Heart. The Black 
Cat. The Pit and the Pendulum. The Fall of the Mel- 
ancholy House of Usher. The Cask of Amontillado. 
Bertrand B . 

Hawthorne. The Birthmark. Rappaccini's Daughter. 
The Ambitious Guest. 

Kipling. At the End of the Passage. The Man Who Would 
be King. The Courting of Dinah Shadd. At the Pit's 
Mouth. 

Maupassant. La Mere Sauvage. A Coward. The Neck- 
lace. The Piece of String ("The Odd Number"), Une 
Vendetta. 



READING LIST 243 

Stevenson. Markheim (reprinted in Jessup and Canby, 

"Book of the Short-Story"). 
Balzac. La Grande Breteche (translated in Jessup and 

Canby). 
Turgeneff. A Lear of the Steppes (translated in Jessup and 

Canby). 

X. HUMOR 
1. Of Plot, Motive, or Situation 

Harte. Colonel Starbottle for the Plaintiff, Harper's, March, 
1901. The Landlord of the Big Flume Hotel ("Open- 
ings in the Old Trail"). 

J. Futrelle. The Gray Ghost, Everybody's, August, 1903. 

H. C. Bunner. The Love Letters of Smith ("Short Sixes," 
reprinted in Baldwin's "American Short-Stories"). 

Will Lewis. Mike Grady's Safety, Everybody's, October, 
1905. 

S. E. White. Life of the Winds of Heaven, McClure's, 
August, 1902. 

Gelett Burgess. Mademoiselle Parchesi, McClure's, Octo- 
ber, 1900. 

Mary Moss. A Pompadour Angel, McClure's, September, 
1903. 

Marsh. The Girl on the Sands, Strand, October, 1904. 

P. Mighels. A Bird's-eye View of Heaven, McClure's, 
August, 1902. 

T. B. Aldrich. Goliath, Century, 23 : 561. 

Edith Wharton. The Pelican ("The Greater Inclination"). 

Sarah Jewett. Fame's Little Day, Harper's, March, 
1885. 

Pendexter. When Knighthood wore Skates, Everybody's, 
January, 1906. 

Loomis. The Cannibals and Mr Buffum, Cosmopolitan, 
January, 1906. 



244 THE SHORT-STORY 

2. Of Diction and Point of View 

Barrie. How Gavin Birse put it to Mag Lownie. A 
Tillyloss Scandal, especially Chapter 6. Auld Licht 
Idylls, especially Chapters 3, 4, and 8. 

Twain. The Private History of a Campaign that Failed, 
Century, 9 : 193. 

"O. Henry." The Lotus and the Cockleburrs, Everybody's, 
October, 1903. The Phonograph and the Graft, Mc- 
Clure's, February, 1903. On Behalf of the Management, 
Everybody's, February, 1904. The Fourth in Salvador, 
McClure's, July, 1905. A Tempered Wind, McClure's, 
August, 1904. The Princess and the Puma, Everybody's, 
November, 1903. The Atavism of John Tom Little 
Bear, Everybody's, July, 1903. 

Henry Phillips. Red Saunders at Big Bend, McClure's, 
January, 1904. By Proxy, McClure's, October, 1903. 
The Demon in the Canon, McClure's, January, 1902. 

3. Of Child Life 

Josephine Dodge Daskam. Ardelia in Arcady, McClure's, 
February, 1902. Edgar, the Choir-boy Uncelestial, 
McClure's, January, 1902. 

Myra Kelly. The Land of Heart's Desire, McClure's, 
July, 1904. A Christmas Present for a Lady, McClure's, 
December, 1902. Morris and the Honorable Tim, 
McClure's, September, 1903. The Touch of Nature, 
McClure's, January, 1904. When a Man's Widowed, 
McClure's, November, 1903. 

Ellis Butler. The Lady across the Aisle, McClure's, 
January, 1906. 

Marion Hill. A Happy Lapse from Paradise, McClure's, 
March, 1905. Fruit of the Fair, McClure's, October, 
1904. 



READING LIST 245 

Kate Douglas Wiggin. Patsy. The Birds' Christmas 

Carol. 
Empeigh Merwyn. Miss Janumit Latlit, McClure's, April, 

1902. 

XI. THE AUTHOR'S ATTITUDE 

Hardy. On the Western Circuit ("Life's Little Ironies"). 
Garland. A Branch Road. 
Coppee. The Sabots of Little Wolff. 
Balzac. La Grande Breteche. 

Kipling. The Hill of Illusion. At the Pit's Mouth. Baa- 
Baa Black Sheep. 
Ruth Stuart. A Note of Scarlet, Century, May- June, 1899. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR ASSIGNMENTS OF 
STORIES AND CONSTRUCTIVE EXERCISES 

A course in short-story writing presupposes elementary 
practice in narration. It may be profitable, however, at the 
start, to overlap such work by a few assignments in the simpler 
forms of narrative. The themes and exercises listed below 
are not recommended for wholesale adoption in any class- 
room, but are presented in the hope that some of them may 
prove useful hints. 

It will be noted that the use of a reading list of stories roughly 
classified, so that they may be profitably discussed in the class- 
room, will furnish a valuable preparation for original con- 
structive work in special forms of the short-story where a 
definite effect is aimed at. The good and the bad points of the 
students' work may also be discussed in class so far as they 
are of general interest, and more fully in private consultation. 
Painstaking reconstruction and rewriting of promising ma- 
terial after criticism will be found the most helpful part of a 
course in story -writing. The extemporaneous exercises (ten 
to fifteen minutes) may be at first distasteful, but will soon 
grow interesting. Their best service is in ridding the student 
of the idea that he cannot write at all unless inspired. 

SIMPLE NARRATIVE 

i. A narrative of a day's experience; involving selection of 
incidents, proportion, and perspective. 

2. A tale of adventure, with one main character: a series 
of interesting events with or without a special plot construction. 
246 



SUGGESTIONS FOR ASSIGNMENTS 247 

The action should progress constantly and increase in intensity 
toward an effective climax. 

PLOT CONSTRUCTION 

3. As a preliminary to plot construction, the student should 
analyze several stories whose plots are prominent (e.g. Poe's 
" The Gold-Bug "), and several written to display a motive, 
so that he will grasp plot and idea definitely enough to be able 
to express them. 

4. A plot story constructed from a single incident found 
ready in another form (e.g. a news paragraph, an incident or 
episode from a novel or a narrative poem). The source should 
be handed in with the story for comparison. This will test 
the student's appreciation of the difference between the short- 
story and other narrative forms. 

5. A plot outline constructed from a single incident in the 
student's own experience. 

6. A plot outline developing a given situation. (For ex- 
ample, the newspapers, a few years ago, were full of accounts 
of the abandonment of little Jimmy Whistler on the steps of 
an artist's studio, and of his legal adoption by the three young 
men who found him. Follow out the consequences of some 
such situation.) 

7. A plot story working from an imagined situation of the 
characters: more specifically, the development of a " problem- 
plot." (See Maupassant's " The Coward," " The Necklace," 
" A Piece of String " ; Balzac's " A Passion in the Desert " ; 
Garland's " Up the Coulee.") 

8. A plot story developing a given idea or motive. Care 
must be taken to make the idea distinct but not too baldly 
prominent. 

Some of Hawthorne's unused ideas ("American Note- 
Books ") will furnish starting-points. 

9. The same assignment may be repeated, the student in- 



248 THE SHORT-STORY 

venting the motive or idea. It should be distinct enough in 
his mind to admit of definite phrasing. 

10. A " surprise " story, with a reverse or unexpected end- 
ing. This is an exercise in handling plot probabilities. 

ii. A " detective " story; that is, a story presenting a mys- 
terious situation and working backward to its solution. This 
is an exercise in ingenious plot-making. 

12. A story whose plot is rigidly subordinated to the work- 
ing out of a definite mood or imaginative impression. This 
is an exercise for securing unity of impression. 

13. A reconstruction of one of the simple plot stories already 
written, crystallizing the incidents so that the story falls apart 
into a few striking scenes that may be vividly conceived and 
written out with little if any connecting narrative. This is 
designed to give practice in dramatic presentation of the main 
incidents and subordination of the minor. 

MECHANISM 

14. Study plot stories already written to see whether they 
can be improved by a new location in point of time. Most 
stories are written on too large a scale at the beginning, so 
that the ending, which is the story proper, must be contracted. 
Rewrite from a good central standpoint, from which the small 
beginnings will assume their true perspective. Note also the 
methods of passing gaps in time, and improve transitions 
wherever possible. 

BEGINNING 

15. Extemporaneous. Furnish a background in the least 
space possible, and carry the story just far enough to enlist the 
reader's interest. 

16. Write a paragraph or two setting an appropriate back- 
ground for working out an assigned effect (such as the mood 
and motive of Mary Wilkins Freeman's " The Solitary "). 

17. Given a complex situation, as, for example, a clash be- 



SUGGESTIONS FOR ASSIGNMENTS 249 

tween character and environment, or any problem plot, write 
a slow beginning indicating time, place, and all preliminary 
events which are necessary for a full understanding of the situ- 
ation. 

18. Extemporaneous. Write a beginning formally intro- 
ducing the main character by description and explanation or 
narration. 

19. Extemporaneous. Write a beginning introducing a 
character in the midst of the story, and rapidly suggesting the 
preconditions. 

20. Write a conversational beginning which will not require 
the return of the action to its starting-point, but will be self- 
explanatory of the situation. 

POINT OF VIEW. THE NARRATIVE FORM 

21. Write a first person story involving some analysis of 
motive and interpreting of situation. 

22. Write the same story in the third person, omitting all 
comment from the author. 

23. Rewrite a story from the point of view of the second 
character rather than of the main one. Note how the story 
changes. 

ENDING 

24. Write out in full the denouement and conclusion for a 
plot outlined by the instructor. 

25. Extemporaneous. End a story which is read aloud up 
to the denouement {e.g. Maupassant's "The Coward"). Try 
to follow out the plot probabilities and get the inevitable 
ending if there is one. 

26. Extemporaneous. Repeat Exercise 25 for the sake of 
securing harmony of tone with the original. 

Bunner's "Love Letters of Smith" (" Short Sixes") called 
forth some excellent variations on the original conclusion. 



250 THE SHORT-STORY 

27. Write a story involving careful preparation for denoue- 
ment. See whether you can secure the effect of climax by a 
very gradual revelation of the way to a conclusion which is 
inevitable and easily foreseen. 

28. Write a story with an ending which does not entirely 
solve the situation, but yet brings the narrative to an artistic 
close. The situation must be a strong one, such as the prob- 
lem plot. 

Note. In revising stories, it will be found that many will be 
improved by shortening the endings — not the denouement, but 
the conclusion. 

UNITY OF IMPRESSION 

29. After a study of Poe, Hawthorne, Maupassant, and 
Kipling, Exercise 12 may be rewritten so that the unity of plot 
and singleness of purpose may be rendered effective by a more 
careful selection of details for impressionistic purposes and by 
harmonious setting. The emphasis is to be laid on harmony 
of tone throughout, and especially between the beginning and 
the ending. 

TITLE 

30. The class may frame (extemporaneously) appropriate 
titles for a short and simple story read aloud by the instructor. 
These may be discussed at once and compared with the original 
as to their degree of fitness. The effort to convert interest- 
ing news captions into genuine story titles, to supply magazine 
stories with other titles, and to find better ones for his old sto- 
ries will help the student to realize the value of a title. 

CHARACTER 

31. Extemporaneous. A complete presentation of a real 
character; the external appearance by description, and the 
traits of mind and character by exposition. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR ASSIGNMENTS 251 

32. Extemporaneous. Rewrite Exercise 31 with an eye 
for sjory points. Make the description suitable for incor- 
poration in a story, and select the leading trait or traits for 
emphasis. 

^. Extemporaneous. An impressionistic description of 
a face, so as to suggest the main features of the character or 
disposition. 

34. Extemporaneous. A brief analytic sketch of an imag- 
inary composite character. 

35. Extemporaneous. Narration of a minor incident 
strikingly suggesting a trait of character through a single action. 

36. Extemporaneous. A character presented under the in- 
fluence of a strong emotion. Facial expression, intensity of 
dialogue, and action may all be made suggestive. See how 
much can be suggested without analysis (preparatory to 
Exercise 38). 

37. A simple story of character involving a growing concep- 
tion and realization of one main character. 

38. The story of a crisis in the life of a single character, with 
a mere suggestion of future change or growth. 

39. A story whose main character goes through a process of 
development. The process may be one of degeneration or 
regeneration ; or it may portray the ripening or dissolution of 
any great mental or emotional forces without involving moral 
issues (e.g. Mary Wilkins Freeman's "The Revolt of 
' Mother'"). 

40. The same story (39) may be presented by the dramatic 
method of scenes showing stages in the growth of the main 
characters. Here the plot must be rigidly subordinated to 
the presentation of the character; and the main incident must 
be expanded. 

41. An impressionistic sketch of character emphasizing 
strongly a single trait or the total imaginative impression (e.g, 
Hawthorne's "The White Old Maid"). 



252 THE SHORT-STORY 

42. A character story involving the principle of contrast. 

(a) Contrast between the apparent and the real 

nature of the character. (Kipling's "A 
Second-Rate Woman.") 

(b) Conflicting elements within the man. A com- 

plex character consisting of a balance between 
opposing forces. (Garland's " Up the Coulee." 
See also Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. 
Hyde.") 

(c) A contrast between two or more characters of a 

story. (Stevenson's "A Lodging for the 
Night"; Harte's "Outcasts of Poker Flat.") 

43. A story of child character. This requires sympathy 
and delicacy of treatment. 

44. A story whose main character is the type of a class or 
a profession of men. (The motive or idea will be prominent.) 

45. A symbolic sketch of character (Hawthorne's "The 
Great Stone Face"; Coppee's "The Sabots of Little Wolff"; 
Mary Wilkins Freeman's "The Twelfth Guest"). 

Note. The oral telling of original three-minute anecdotes illus- 
trative of traits of character may tend to sharpen the student's 
observation. 

Subordination of characters is an important part of the work 
of characterization. Refer, in this connection, to exercise 23. 

DIALOGUE 

46. Extemporaneous. Two characters from a story pre- 
viously written converse on an assigned topic of current 
interest. This exercise is designed to compel a vivid realiza- 
tion of the characters' mental point of view. 

47. Extemporaneous. Report an interesting conversation 
overheard. Then condense and edit it so that it might be 
incorporated in a story. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR ASSIGNMENTS 253 

48. A dialogue story with the least possible connecting nar- 
rative and comment. 

49. A story told through dialogue alone after the two main 
characters are introduced. Indication of the speaker should 
not be necessary. 

50. A group of persons presented in conversation, with the 
effort to suggest as many characters as possible through dia- 
logue in a single situation. (Chapters of " Mill on the Floss" 
will serve for illustration.) 

51. A dramatic situation (an emotional crisis) quickly sug- 
gested by intense dialogue. This exercise will be useful in 
connection with assignment 38. 

SETTING 

52. A college story. (Try, first of all, to realize existing 
and familiar backgrounds.) 

53. A story of historical setting may be attempted if the 
student is willing to collect the necessary information. The 
literature of the period of the Civil War, for instance, should 
make it comparatively easy to realize the circumstances vividly. 

54. A story of local color, portraying the life in a section of 
the country with which the student is personally familiar. 
Dialect may be resorted to, if necessary. 

55. A story whose setting harmonizes with the motive and 
the desired impression of the story. (Study the use of back- 
ground by Hardy and Mary Wilkins Freeman.) 

56. A story whose setting contrasts with the final impres- 
sion or motive of the story. This assignment, like the pre- 
ceding one, calls for a careful study of the relation between a 
character and his environment. 

Note. After studying the function of the setting, old stories 
may need to be revised with reference to the occasional touches 
which elaborate the background. 



254 THE SHORT-STORY 

REALISTIC SETTING 

The simplest exercises in descriptions of rooms, of streets, 
of towns, etc., will be useful preliminaries. It will be found 
that all of these may be made suggestive of the character of 
the inhabitants. 

57. A homely story of everyday life, with the object of realiz- 
ing vividly the small details that are significant. 

58. A realistic sketch of the life of a special class, profession, 
locality or time, or manners or customs: the aim to be ac- 
curacy of detail (a similar assignment to 54). 

59. A sketch of the same general nature as the above but in- 
volving sympathetic interpretation; the narrative to have a 
distinct motive. 

FANTASY 

60. A story of mystery explained. (Kipling's "The Re- 
turn of Imray's Ghost.") 

61. A story of mystery unexplained; the weird, the super- 
natural, or the fantastic. (Poe, Hawthorne, Irving, Kipling, 
will furnish models.) 

62. A fairy-tale, allegory, or fable. 

63. A scientific romance. 

THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT 
1. Love 

64. A simple story of the dawning of love, under normal 
conditions, in one or two main characters. This may require 
a hint of development of character. 

65. A story of love involving conflict, such as the adjustment 
of the claims of love to the other claims of life. More charac- 
ters may be presented here, and the plot may be of the nature 
of a problem. 

66. A story whose motive is the affection between man and 



SUGGESTIONS FOR ASSIGNMENTS 255 

man, woman and woman, child and parent, or brother and 
sister. (This field has been less worked than that of the 
customary love motive.) 

67. A brief love story, suggesting the situations almost en- 
tirely by means of conversation. See suggestions, Chapter XIII. 

68. Extemporaneous. An unique proposal. 

2. Pathos and Tragedy 

69. Extemporaneous. Narrate a pathetic incident, spar- 
ing all but the necessary details. 

70. Extemporaneous. Describe the death of your chief 
character. Take care not to be oversentimental or melo- 
dramatic. 

71. A pathetic story of character. This requires of the 
author sympathetic interpretation of the character in relation 
to his environment. (Mary Wilkins Freeman's "A Village 
Lear.") 

The sorrows of child life are peculiarly adapted to the scope 
of the short-story. 

72. A tragedy of character. (This may be combined with 
exercises 38 to 42.) 

73. A tragedy of incident. (A variation of the fate motive 
may be used. Note that the tragedy here is external : that of 
72, internal.) 

3. Humor 

An instructor with a sense of humor will study his men 
carefully before prescribing any definite humorous effect for 
them to aim at. It is to be hoped that some humor will crop 
out when not solicited. 

74. A story in the first person, humorously revealing the 
author's temperament or character through his reflective com- 
ments on his own experience. 



256 THE SHORT-STORY 

75. A humorous sketch of adult character. (Harte's 
" Colonel Starbottle for the Plaintiff.") 

76. A humorous story of child life. (Josephine Daskam's 
"Ardelia in Arcady.") 

77. A story whose main incident presents a comical situa- 
tion. 

78. A farce or one-act comedy. 

MISCELLANY 

79. A diary short-story. 

80. A short-story suggested by letters, telegrams, or tele- 
phone messages, or these in combination. 

81. A story suitable for a special season or occasion. 

82. A single situation presented, largely by description, so 
suggestively as to hint a story. The situation must be strong, 
dramatic. (The French writers excel in this practice of deftly 
cutting out the heart of a story situation.) 

83. A one-act play. (See Howells's "Parlor Farces/' 
Harper's.) 



INDEX 



Action, gaps in, 72-75; plot and, 
56-57; speech and, 118; unity 
of, 153- 

Adams, Mary, 69. 

Addison, 199, 219. 

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 68. 

Allen, James Lane, 152, 162. 

Anecdote, 11, 123. 

Austen, Jane, 169, 173. 

Author, as source of material, 22- 
24, 103-104; expressing him- 
self in dialogue, 134; point of 
view of, 66, 177; spirit of, 224- 
232. 

B 

Baldwin, Charles Sears, 120. 

Balzac, 38, 80, 176. 

Barrett, C. R., 91, 163. 

Barrie, J. M., 164. 

Bates, Arlo, 144, 163. 

Beginning, conversational, 59 ; 

descriptive, 62 ; expository, 61 ; 

length of, 58; setting the tone, 

64-66, 86. 
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 206. 



Cable, George, 152, 162, 164, 
207. 

Characters, analysis of, 116-118; 
at a crisis, 104 ; developing, 106- 
109; in relation to environ- 
ment, 123; interpreted by 
author, 102; materials for, 102; 
motives of, 119, 122; names of, 
125-127; realistic, 103, 121; 



speech and action of, 118; sub- 
ordination of, 119. 

Climax, defined, 77; method of 
securing, 55; necessity of, 50. 

Commonplace, in characters, 120; 
in conversation, 136; in intro- 
duction, 64. 

Conclusion, see Ending. 

Contrast, as plot motive, 36-38; 
between character and environ- 
ment, 36, 154. 

Conversation, see Dialogue. 

Coppee, 50. 

"Craddock, Charles," 62. 

Crisis, in character development, 
40, 116; crisis story, 122. 



D'Arblay, Madame, 144. 

Daudet, 84, 205. 

Defoe, 54, 141, 165, 175. 

Denouement, an essential of plot, 
50; and suspense, 76. See also 
Climax and Ending. 

Description, in the beginning, 62; 
of characters, 109, 116; super- 
fluous, 149; to harmonize with 
mood, 158. 

Detective story, 30-32. 

Dialect, 163-168. 

Dialogue, portraying character, 
118, 128; convincing, 130-133; 
defined, 128; editing of, 136- 
140; explanatory, 134; indi- 
cation of speaker in, 143-146; 
introductory, 59; length of 
speeches in, 140; paragraphing 
of, 143; suggesting mood, 133; 
type of story, 146-148. 



257 



2 5 8 



INDEX 



Diary short-story, 69. 
Dickens, 205. 

Dramatic conception of story, 54- 
55- 

E 

Eliot, George, 40, 103, 117, 129, 134, 
Emotional element, 188-224. 
Ending, 77; as determining plan, 

52 ; as related to climax, 77-78; 

rapid, 78; simple, 80. 
Ethical problem plot, 39, 47. 
Ethical tone, see Author's spirit. 
Experience, see Material. 



Facts, observation of, 16; narra- 
tion of, not fiction, 17; must be 
plausible, 18-21. 

Fantasy, 180-188. 

Feeling, see Emotion. 

Fenn, George, 184. 

Fielding, 69. 

First person narrator, 66. 

Ford, Paul, 165. 

Freeman, Mary Wilkins, 41, 123, 
154, 162, 207. 



Garland, Hamlin, 37, 39, 81, 116, 

152, 154, 162, 197, 207, 229. 
Goethe, 74. 

H 

Hardy, Thomas, 230-232. 
Harte, Bret, 36, 152, 162, 207. 
Hawthorne, 26, 29, 32, 35, 36, 41- 

47, 58, 73, 76, 84-85, 88-89, 

146, 157, 162, 181, 185, 210. 
Hope, 60. 
Horror and evil in short-story, 213- 

216. 
Howells, William, 50, 107, 150, 

169, 176, 181. 
Humor, 216-223. 



Imagination, training of, 15-17; 
source of plot motive, 32, 35; 
amateur's lack of, no. 

Impression, unity of, 84-89. 

Impressionism, the mark of mod- 
ern short-story, 7, 12; and plot 
unity, 32-36. 

Incident, as source of plot, 32. 

Individuality, see Author. 

Interpretation, necessity of, 22, 
178-179. 

Irving, 58, 146, 153, 183. 



James, Henry, 50, 63, 136, 141, 

173- 
Jewett, Sarah Orne, 152, 162. 



K 



King, Grace, 162. 

Kipling, 37, 38, 54, 60, 61, 70, 84, 

107, 109, 117, 148, 152, 164, 183, 

186, 208, 228. 



Landscape description, to convey 

mood, 86, 159. 
Letter form of story, 68. 
Linn, James Weber, 104, 158. 
Local color, 151-152, 162-168. 
Long, John Luther, 76. 
Love element, 189-198. 

M 

Maartens, Maarten, 209. 

Magruder, Julia, 162. 

Manzoni, 193. 

Martin, Helen, 168. 

Materials, collecting, 14-28; for 

characterization, 102. 
Matthews, Brander, 6, 187, 192. 



INDEX 



259 



Maupassant, 36, 38, 54, 77, 84, 
118, 210, 213. - 

Mechanism, 58-83. 

Melodramatic tragedy, 204, 212. 

Memory, the condenser of ex- 
perience, 21 ; and note-books, 24. 

Meredith, George, 126, 136, 154. 

Mood, psychological impression, 
34; dialogue suggesting, 133. 
See also Impressionism. 

Moral, not equivalent of motive, 
42; tone, desirability of, 232. 

Moralizing, amateur, 61. 

Morris, Clara, 67. 

Morrison, Arthur, 153. 

Motive, as source of plot, 28-47. 

Movement, see Action and Mech- 
anism. 

Mystery, see Fantasy. 



N 



Names, for characters and places, 

125. 
Narration and short-story, 54, 108, 

118. 
Narrator, first person, 66; third 

person, 68; in dialogue, 147. 
Norris, Frank, 112. 
Note-books, 24-27. 
Novel, relation of, to short-story, 

2-9, 104. 

O 

Observation, 14-17. 
Ollivant, Alfred, 60, 147, 148. 
Oxenham, John, 210. 



Page, Thomas Nelson, 52, 162. 
Parker, Gilbert, 162. 
Pathos, 198-216. 
Payn, James, 125. 
Plot, 48-57; climax of, 56; com- 
plex or simple, 51, 85; denned, 



48; necessity of, 49-51; unity 

of, 54- 
Point of view, see Author and 

Mechanism. 
Probability, plot, 18-21. 
Problem plot, 38-40. 



R 



Realism, in characterization, 103, 
121; in dialogue, 135. 

Realistic movement, 169-179; de- 
fined, 169-172; influence of, on 
literary methods, 175-177. 

Richardson, 68. 

Romance, see Fantasy. 

Ruth, Book of, 4, 150. 



Scope of short- story, 104. 

Scott, Sir Walter, 151. 

Sectional short-story, 162-168. 

Sentimentalism, 188. 

Setting, 149-168; description for, 
149-150; for harmony or con- 
trast, 153; local color, 151; 
structural use of, 152. 

Short-story, and drama, 9, 54; 
and narration, 54; and novel, 
2-9, 104; defined, 10; historical 
sketch, 1-9; scope of, 104. 

Simplification of life in short-story, 
22. 

Situation, the short-story a single, 
6. 

Situations, in dramatic short-story, 
14; in story of character, 108. 

Smollett, 165. 

Speech and action in characteriza- 
tion, 118. 

Steele, 219. 

Stevenson, Robert Louis, 36, 54, 
109, 183. 

Stockton, Frank, 81. 

Stuart, Ruth, 41. 162, 229. 

Sully, James, 199. 



260 



INDEX 



Surprise, not essential to plot, 29, 

5i» 53- 
Suspense and climax., 56, 77. 
Symbolic motive, 42-47. 



Tale, defined, n-12; distin- 
guished from short-story, 6. 

Thackeray, 167, 174. 

Theme, see Motive. 

Thompson, Maurice, 174-180. 

Time, brief period covered, 53; 
location of story in, 55, 70; 
transitions, 73. 

Titles, alliterative, 98; double, 
96; essentials of good, 91; 
faulty, 93-99; sources of, 92. 

Tone, see Unity of impression and 
Author's spirit. 



Tragedy and pathos, 198-216. 
Trollope, Anthony, 137. 
Twain, Mark, 162. 



U 



Underplot, 51. 

Unity of impression, 6, 84-90. 

Unities, the dramatic, 53. 

- W 

Wharton, Edith, 126, 136. 
Wilkins, Mary, see Freeman. 
Wonder, see Fantasy. 



Youth and character-formation, 
122. 








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